With the excep­tion of their host, the lead­ers of the G7 gath­ered in Italy are demon­stra­bly con­fused about how to deal with surg­ing right wing pop­ulism. The advice they need was pro­vid­ed by  one of history’s most sto­ried right-wingers, Charles de Gaulle: “Faced with cri­sis, the man of char­ac­ter falls back upon him­self.” 

Being the son of the most strong-willed,  con­tro­ver­sial, and in spite of his fail­ings respect­ed lead­ers his coun­try has ever had, Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau ought to know that.
Instead, his sum­ma­tion of the conun­drum was as pab­u­lum-ish as the aver­age  polit­i­cal promise: “It is of con­cern to see polit­i­cal par­ties choos­ing to instru­men­tal­ize anger, fear, divi­sion, anxiety.”
If you accept the adage and Bib­li­cal wis­dom about reap­ing what you sow, it  ought to be clear why the choice is being made.
The root cause is calum­ny, defined by the Mer­ri­am Web­ster dictionary as: “a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion intend­ed to harm anoth­er’s reputation.”
It encap­su­lates what has in no small mea­sure become the dri­ving force of what pass­es for polit­i­cal dis­course, cam­paign­ing and posi­tions that pro­vide vot­ers with lit­tle or noth­ing on which to base ratio­nal choices.
Log­i­cal­ly, a politi­cian who demon­strates char­ac­ter should eas­i­ly counter self-serv­ing devi­ous­ness, lack of con­vic­tion and patent­ly emp­ty cam­paign promises.
Per­verse­ly, when char­ac­ter does come to the fore, it tends to be ignored or den­i­grat­ed in favour of easy hits, par­ti­san­ship or pure spite.
The U.S. media – both main­stream and pseu­do – seems  unable not to obsess­es over Joe Biden’s age and occa­sion­al ver­bal (and lit­er­al) stum­bles., while all but ignor­ing Don­ald Trump’s cor­nu­copia of them.
To some extent that’s why — if you believe polls — half the U.S. elec­torate wel­comes and believes his neg­a­tive, nasty rants and inchoate ram­blings, when what mat­ters for gov­er­nance are prin­ci­ples and enough char­ac­ter to stick to them.
Noth­ing in Trump’s record shows even a glint of either, and yet, “After Mr. Trump was con­vict­ed in Man­hat­tan on 34 felony counts, his cam­paign raised record sums online…”.
Pres­i­dent Biden, by con­trast, has kept doing his job with dig­ni­ty, dogged deter­mi­na­tion and an avowed respect for the rule of law, even as the tri­al of his son has sub­ject­ed every cor­ner of his family’s life to the unre­lent­ing glare of pub­lic expo­sure none of us would want shed on even our most incon­se­quen­tial secrets and per­son­al travails.
That’s char­ac­ter, forged by tragedy, honed with endurance and will.
How­ev­er you mea­sure that assess­ment, it beats the alter­na­tive in my book. So why is it not recognised?

                 IT’S NOT JUST POLITICS

The anti-estab­lish­ment swing also reflects pub­lic dis­gust with the obscene amounts of mon­ey lav­ished on CEOs who don’t seem to be held account­able for any­thing their com­pa­ny does wrong, or to the tax man, come to that.
Accord­ing to a recent study by Har­vard Law School, “…com­pen­sa­tion for CEOs reached $15.7 mil­lion in 2023, which would mark an 11.3% increase from 2022.”That came out before Elon Musk’s 50 bil­lion-plus dol­lars self-reward.
Okay, it’s not in cash, but nobody needs, or deserves, that kind of mon­ey. But then again: “The board promised Mr. Musk — at his urg­ing — that if he made the board and the share­hold­ers tru­ly wealthy by boost­ing the stock price, by what­ev­er means, he could have 12 per­cent of the company.”
The dis­qui­et­ing phrase in that is “by what­ev­er means”. But as George Wash­ing­ton warned more than 250 years ago: ““Few men have virtue to with­stand the high­est bidder.”

              CHARACTER AS A JOB CRITERIA

One of the few lumi­nar­ies at the G7 who, by his job alone ought to be able to claim he can and does answer to a high­er pow­er than Mam­mon and re-elec­tion is Pope Fran­cis. Even as a non-believ­er, I recog­nise and appre­ci­ate the moral author­i­ty he can bring to a G‑7 gabfest. And before any­one chimes in about it, giv­en his record, the much ado over his report­ed “gay slurs” seems more over-wrought than disallowing.
More impor­tant, and telling, is  a 2005 Vat­i­can rul­ing that “homo­sex­u­al can­di­dates can­not become priests because their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion estranges them from the prop­er sense of paternity.”
If the church has a recruit­ment prob­lem for the priest­hood now, imag­ine what would hap­pen if they chucked out all the gay priests and refused to let any more into the vocation.
Even more to the point, why, exact­ly, are any of us, believ­ers or oth­er­wise, expect­ed to accept that celi­bate men of any sex­u­al or not ori­en­ta­tion know any­thing about rais­ing chil­dren, a job and com­mit­ment that any par­ent will tell you, has to be expe­ri­enced to be even mar­gin­al­ly understood?
And if that’s not rea­son enough to ignore papal views on the mat­ter, con­sid­er the church’s oth­er char­ac­ter flaws, not least of which are the sex abuse scan­dals that fly in the face of what the per­pe­tra­tors preach and alleged­ly worship.
Put all that togeth­er and one has to won­der why lead­ers faced with sup­port melt­down still haven’t fig­ured out that embrac­ing what ought to be repul­sive is in direct pro­por­tion to the per­ceived flaws in or lack of, character.

Com­ments are wel­comed. Click CONTACT on the site header.
To receive e‑mail alerts to new posts, Click SIGN-UP on the header.