plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Return with us now to the thrilling days of yesteryear when (OK, if you're old enough to know how the rest goes and yearn for it, you'll be disappointed) . . . when blawggers talked to each other on their blawgs.

Over at Simple Justice this morning, Scott Greenfield wrote about honor.

You told the truth because telling the truth was the right thing to do. You kept your promises because it was the honorable thing to do.
We were honorable people.

Now, not so much.

There is no country for the honorable anymore. From the top down, and the bottom up, lies, deceit manipulation, distortion are all acceptable means of achieving goals, and goals are more important than how you attain them. We can fight over whether a goal is worthy or correct, but an honorable person will not lie to win the battle, will not use fallacious arguments to see if he can get an easy win, will not distort the facts to achieve victory.

I started to write a comment, but it was getting out of hand, turning into the sort of linguistic perambulation I'm inclined to over here, wandering about in a haze of seemingly-parenthetical distraction in the hope that I'll actually end up with a point that draws together the threads.  (And you wonder how many posts I've a abandoned over the years?  Or, more likely, you don't.)

Anyway, here's the thing.  I think Scott's wrong.  Sort of.

I want to be clear here.  Scott's not denying that there are honorable people today.  Folks who do the right thing, who speak and act with integrity because it's the right thing to do even when it hurts.  Folks who will not lie, will not cheat, will not . . . .  Fuck it, here's Raymond Chandler.

But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.

Chandler's was a fictional detective, his fictional detective in particular.  But the description so far as I've quoted it here (and of Chandler's detective it goes on) is apt.

As I say, Scott doesn't deny that there are honorable people.  His claim is that we no longer view honor as a goal, no longer embarce the ideal.  Now it's the game, the score, the win.  Lie, cheat, do what you can to get there.  (What the public has always accused lawyers of, by the way, though lawyers have always asserted that they're better than that.)  

Where he's wrong, I think, is to think it was different once.  He's wrong to think that we used to honor honor in some way more than the breach (Once more unto the breach, dear friends) but no longer do.

It's probably true that actually honorable people are and have always been rare.  But the idea of honor, the ideal of it, that's something else.  Shakespeare's Anthony knew the strength of the ideal when he offered his ironic and iconic lines.

For Brutus is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men.

But so, albeit less eloquently, does Donald Trump when he accuses CNN or the NY Times or Washington Post or whoever, of

FAKE NEWS!!!

It's a fake, of course.  Every bit as fake and as calculated, if less knowing, than Anthony's remarks about Brutus.  But the claim's the same.  And if he can sell it . . . .

There's no shortage of shadenfeude these days.  It comes from the right and the left, from those we, er, honor and those we despise.  But it's all there because we like the idea of integrity - we just don't much act in conformity.  And we're willing (though perhaps topic right now, and it's not clear how far) to forgive blatant hypocrisy and accept outright lies. 

But forgiveness isn't conceptual approval.  Though perhaps between 24 hour news cycles and social media and especially hatred and certainty of our own righteousness in cause (if not in manner) we're more open about our willingness to tolerate the dishonest.

Meanwhile.