Confirming the hypocrisy of your opponent feels really good. When you catch them out in a contradiction of values, championing the same conviction today that they condemned only yesterday, when you and your team believed in it–man, that’s video-worthy.
Watch it and let that intoxicating cocktail of anger and vindication tingle all the way down.
Then get to work.
It is one of the more painful realizations of our era that hypocrisy doesn’t matter. Establishing that it’s all a double standard and that the impassioned virtue of these people is nothing but self-serving performance isn’t changing anything. They still have their platform. They still have their audience, who, it seems, don’t care.
Lament the injustice of it. Pity the deception of it. Then get to work.
People will pay for hypocrisy when enough of their audience, enough of their constituents, care about the same things we care about (we’re hypocrites too) and when their lies begin to cost more than polling points. So let’s get to work articulating and embodying a virtuous citizenship, a virtuous democracy, that is rooted in convictions that don’t change with party politics: respect for human dignity, care for children, honesty among leadership.
Resisting this nightmare is a good place to start.
YoRocko! 