Everyone has to have one. When you go to sleep at night, you have to think, what have I done to make the world a better place? This means that you have to have inner convictions. The statement resonates: If you stand for nothing, you fall for everything.
My daughter asks: How could a woman vote for Trump? That is a conviction. In our discussion what emerges is it is not okay to denigrate women and grope them for recreational leisure. No one should behave this way. And now, this is our president.
The issue runs deeper. What about denigrating others? When my children were little, if they bad-mouthed people or attempted to bully, they were punished. I had higher expectations for them. I expected for them to become moral citizens of the world, which they have become. The debates were a mockery of civil behavior, when Trump started discussing the size of people's hands.
Yes, what if the president of your country is not civil? What is he has a son who compares immigrants to Skittles? Then what? I have heard elementary school students crying because their president is a mean man. "Will he get punished, Mommy?" a young boy asks his mother, my colleague. And the answer is no-no consequences. How can that be? My grief is about my naive assumption that there are HUGE consequences for bad behavior. Religious leaders-the pope-has reiterated people just don't speak that way; no one does, no one should.
Or perhaps, others do, and Trump has given license to an amoral world, where it is okay to speak language which incites. The consequence? Getting elected to a presidential office-a narcissist's dream of power. And half our country put him in this place. CONVICTIONS? MORAL COMPASS?
Tell that to your children when you put them to sleep at night, then look yourself in the mirror.
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