[Dialogue] Elliot Spitzer and America's Ethical Perversity

Wed Mar 12 10:05:10 EDT 2008

This so thoroughly echoes the feelings my wife and I had when we read about
Spitzer that I want to share it.  I am incensed that my email access program
filed this as Junk Mail.

Jim Rippey in Bellevue, NE

Elliot Spitzer and America's Ethical Perversity
             by Rabbi Michael Lerner, Tikkun.org,  3/12/08

 The cross-the-political-spectrum attacks on Elliot Spitzer and the
intensity of the demands that he resign his office show just how far the
Right-wing sexual moralizing has been able to trump any other kind of
ethical reasoning in American society.

 Going to a prostitute is legal in some states and some countries around the
world, and is often the very arrangement that saves families from splitting
up whose sexual energies have diminished but whose love is intact. It's not
uncommon for men (and now increasingly women as well) who have achieved
great power in our society by adopting an outer show of ruthless pursuit of
power and influence (even, as in Spitzer's case, if the power is aimed at
pursuing laudable ends) to feel a deep  emptiness and loneliness that is not
addressed by friends or spouse, and hence to seek some kind of outside
connection no matter how superficial that is not bound by previous rules and
roles. Nevertheless, I and many others in the religious and spiritual world
oppose that practice when it involves adultery or prostitution, because it
depends on the objectification of another human being, so that sex is
disconnected in ways that it should not be from a significant encounter with
the spirit of God in the other or a deep recognition that is the only real
way to overcome existential or situational alienation. 

 Moreover, the trade in women for sexual purposes has frequently led to rape
and abuse and the kidnapping of young women who are sold into sexual
slavery. All of these outrageous practices are abhorrent and should be
challenged. The flaunting of sexuality in the media, and the implicit
message that the only real satisfaction comes from having the most
physically attractive people as sexual partners, not only generates huge
dissatisfaction even as it allows corporate advertise to become predators
manipulating our personal sense of inadequacy to sell their products, but
also generates desires that feed the sexual trade in women. Given this
larger social context, until sexual satisfaction is so broadly available in
our society that no one has to pay for it and so deeply tied to love that no
one is objectified in the process, this kind of exploitation of women and
degradation of sex is likely to continue. All of these practices foster the
sexual predators of the contemporary world. 

 So Elliot Spitzer deserves to be critiqued and ought to be doing deep
atonement for what he did.  His previous moral arrogance and willingness
when he had power to do so to prosecute others for their participation in
creating prostitution rings makes him an easy target. We, in turn, might
practice the forgiveness that our religious and spiritual traditions preach,
particularly those of us who have been willing to honeslty face how flawed
we ourselves are, and how at times we ourselves fail to embody in our actual
practice with others the values that we publicly espouse. Humility and
compassion are also part of the path of a spiritual progressive. 

 But the intensity of the critique of the N.Y. governor, tied with the
demand that he resign, shows more about American society's ethical
perversity than about Spitzer. 

 The President of the U.S. and the Vice President, working in concert with
several other high ranking officers of our government, lied and distorted to
get us involved in a war that has led to the death of over a million Iraqis,
the displacement of 3 million more, the death of 4,000 Americans and the
wounding of tens of thousands more. After token opposition in Congress, our
elected representatives have overwhelmingly passed budgets funding this war,
rather than refuse to fund any military projects until the President stopped
the war and withdrew the troops.

 Meanwhile, our government has overtly engaged in torture, wiretapping of
our phones, and violation of our human rights and the rights of people
around the world. Senator Diane Feinstein and Senator Charles Schumer votes
to confirm as Attonrey General a right-wing judge who refused to repudiate
these crimes. 

 The U.S. government has rejected every attempt to implement the Kyoto
environmental agreements or to work out new agreements sufficiently strong
to reverse environmental destruction that is certain to lead to new levels
of flooding particularly in several poor countries around the world. The
consequence: tens of millions of deaths. 

 The Clinton Administration pushed, along with corporate support, a set of
trade agreements that have devastated the farmers of many developing
countries, forcing many off their farms and into city slums where their
daughters and sons are often sold into sexual slavery.  The global economic
system we have fostered has led to increasing gaps between the rich and the
poor, so that over one out of every three people on the planet lives on less
than $2 a day, 1.5 billion live on less than one dollar a day, and over
15,000 children die every day from malnutrition-related diseases and
inadequate availability of medicine that is hoarded by the rich countries
who can afford the prices made to ensure huge profits to the pharmaceutical
industry. 

 Health insurance companies and private medical profiteers are doing all
they can to ensure that there will be no health care for tens of millions of
Americans, unless that is provided in ways that guarantee corporate
super-profits and thereby guarantee that the cost of health care paid
through taxes will be huge and create anger at all government social welfare
and well-being programs, leading to their likely de-funding. 
People in the US have faced severe economic crises on a regional and soon on
a national level because corporations move their centers of production to
countries in Asia where they can exploit workers with less government or
union interference and where they can destroy the environment with less
societal restraints. Wild to achieve greater profits, corporations and the
rich have managed to support politicians who lower the taxes on the rich, in
the process bankrupting the public sector or severely reducing its ability
to provide enough funds for quality education, health care, libraries,
public transportation, and social welfare. 

 That there is no outcry for these government officials and corporate
leaders to resign immediately or be impeached, that there is no moral
outrage at the entire system that produces this impact, is America's ethical
perversity. Instead, the only crime against humanity that the media takes
seriously and the politicians fear is being exposed for personal sexual
immorality. While everyone basks in their own self-righteous demands on
Spitzer, we all allow media and elected officials to fundamentally distort
our ethical vision and play out our morality on the smallest of possible
stages while ignoring the global and personal consequences of our larger
ethical failures.

 Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun magazine www.tikkun.org
<http://www.tikkun.org> , Chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives
www.spiritualprogressives.org <http://www.spiritualprogressives.org> ,
rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue-without-walls in San Francisco and Berkeley,
and author of The Left Hand of God. He welcomes comments at
RabbiLerner at tiikkun.org

If you agree with this perspective, call your local media and ask that it be
presented alongside the mainstream views. And help us continue to provide
alternative analyses by joining the Network of Spiritual Progressives
(www.spiritualprogressives.org) and urging your friends to do so as well!   

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