Robert Reich reacts to a Cape Cod Times editorial expressing shock that four teenagers had sex in the waters off Mayflower Beach, and that a crowd gathered around to cheer them on, chanting “USA, USA,” by relating it to how we normalize behavior through examples not only set via social media but by Donald Trump, the President of the United States.
“There was a time, not that long ago," write the editors, "when modesty meant something more significant, when people understood that their behavior in a public place necessarily differed from that which might happen in a private setting. Similarly, there was a time when actions that deviated from societal norms were treated as such, receiving a certain degree of scorn; not only for the behavior itself, but for the time and place in which it was exhibited.”
When I read this I thought of our current president -- who has no modesty and no shame, and whose public actions have deviated so far from what were considered the norms of presidential behavior that the antics of teenagers on a Cape Cod beach seem innocent by comparison.
Yes, we need be concerned about public displays of immorality. Lying blatantly and profusely; disrespecting women; personally profiting from holding high public office; demeaning and denigrating all critics, including judges, journalists, and members of the intelligence community; fueling hatefulness and xenophobia; refusing to release tax returns or put one’s business holdings into a blind trust; and minimizing the importance of (and even possibly encouraging) a foreign power’s interference on his behalf in the presidential election. THESE are the public displays of immorality that now besmirch America.
In response to them we must collectively shout “Not USA! Not USA!”
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| Mayflower Beach, Dennis on Cape Cod |
