As a child, I was taught, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.”
That lesson is meant to teach that there is a principle above victory and success that is more important than victory and success – it’s honor.
A person’s honor was worth more than anything in the world. It was one’s soul, and ultimately it was the standard by which people would be judged, judged by their family, judged by society, judged by history.
The idea of honor is so engrained in some societies that shaming oneself – and by extension shaming one’s family – was so unforgivably grievous that a person who acted dishonorably would kill themselves rather than endure a lifetime of such onerous shame.
Through history, certain religions, fraternal groups and branches of the military measured themselves strictly by the yardstick of honor, using credos like, “Death before dishonor.”
I’m trying to remember when it was during my lifetime that honor, as a public and personal value, died.
I started thinking about this just before last November’s presidential election when candidate Trump pantomimed fellatio on a microphone in front of a crowd of people, apparently for some kind of twisted laughs.
That the former President of the United States would so dishonor himself was staggering to me, much more bothersome than any of Trump’s morally cancerous or corrupt views or actions.
A United States president just doesn’t act so shamefully. George Washington could not tell a lie. Harry Truman’s “the buck stops here” meant that presidents don’t make excuses. Presidents were the tradition-bearers of our highest standards of behavior.
I grew up with three brothers in a neighborhood full of boys, so I’ve seen some juvenile and shameful behavior. And like most other folks, I’ve been guilty of shameful acts that I wish I could undo.
Like most others, I regret my shameful actions because I believe in the idea of honor and specifically, that at the end of the day and at the end of our lives, the only judgment that matters is how we treated others.
Did we behave honorably or not?
Not by how much money, power or fame we have. Just by how we treated others.
The most powerful man in the world was elected and re-elected after mocking a disabled newspaper reporter, after denigrating American heroes including John McCain, after insulting our nation’s brave, fallen soldiers as “losers.” He has made hateful statements about women, minorities, and our nation’s allies.
The man has so dishonored our nation and what we used to call our “core values” that it’s impossible to say whether those values still exist in any meaningful way.
For better or worse, the president is the nation’s role model. What the president does is acceptable, perhaps even to be emulated because the president holds the most honorable responsibility in all the nation — perhaps in all the world — the keys to what Ronald Reagan described as the world’s “shining city upon a hill.”
The shining city on the hill now appears to be littered with garbage, including garbage ideas and garbage behavior. Even in its highest halls of power and prestige, the garbage mounds of shame are piled so high we’re afraid to even speak of them or acknowledge them.
The question is: After Trump is gone and his garbage has been hauled away, can notions of honor and shame ever return? Or is our nation now fated to acceptance of disgraceful behavior by the leaders who occupy its highest offices?
Are honor and shame retrievable or are they lost under those piles of garbage, never to be found and resurrected? If they are gone, are we Americans okay with that?