A free pass

The Trump years were hard. There was a relentless attack on science and reason, promotion of a culture of misogyny and exclusion of religious and racial minorities. From the highest office in the country, there was a sustained effort to create a cult of personality around the leader. Press was the enemy and truth was challenged by alternative facts. The norms of decency were a thing of the past and mocking the weak and the disabled was met with raucous applause.

In addition to all this, what troubled me often was the silence of the people who knew better. Many of my Republican colleagues kept silent or defended the actions of the President. They would agree, in principle, that decency is a value we all should aspire for, or that the press has a role to play, or that attacking science was in no one’s interest, yet they would make an exception for Trump. They would find plenty of weak excuses or use the old argument about us not fully understanding what he meant, or reminded us that we should not pay attention to what he said and in fact he meant something much different. This was not just the case with people in my network, the problem went across the board in rank and file of the party and the supporters.

We are living in a similar time among our midst in Pakistan. People in my circle of friends know full well that the recently used ugly rhetoric, the veiled attacks, the name calling and the personal attacks that are well below dignity of the office (or frankly well below the dignity of any person) are highly inappropriate and simply wrong. These people teach their children to be kind and respectful to others, to be honest and to self-reflect often. Yet — they are unable to condemn the vile discourse. When asked they are armed with a long list of excuses and alternative facts that seem eerily similar to what many of us saw in the Trump years. They say what I heard time and again: they tell me to not pay attention to the rhetoric, the meaning is something much different, or that we should not get stuck on the spoken words, and that we should pay attention to deeds and on balance the other side is evil incarnate. The argument about the other side may or may not be true and requires a separate debate with facts and analysis of performance (not mere accusations and mud-slinging). The issue at hand is whether decency is a core value that we want to espouse or not. The group of people who look up to their leaders and want to emulate them may have shrunk with time, but it is still finite. The core values are universal — they apply to everyone, in the government or outside. Decency and dignity is also not a competition of relative values — it is an absolute value. It matters little whether your language is only slightly worse, or just marginally better, than that of the other group.

While the current situation may be a particularly troublesome episode, there are ample examples of people of all political stripes giving a free pass to their favourite leaders. During the Obama era, the partisans who otherwise championed human rights were willing to provide all kinds of twisted arguments in support of drone strikes. The same is true for supporters of other political parties in Pakistan. The consequence, in every instance, is the same. When we look the other way, find excuses for what is wrong, or put loyalty above honesty, we all become poorer. And in essence we empower our leaders to practise what we find inherently abhorrent. It is as much on them, as it is on us.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 15^th, 2022.

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