standards

I've been trying to be better informed about news, since I'm a registered independent and have to vote according to my interpretation of politics.... so I've been listening to all the opinions about David Vitter. (He, of course, is the senator from Louisiana who is now in deep dog-doo for obvious reasons.)

And there are these people who write or say on the radio that senators should be held to a "higher standard," which makes no sense unless you believe in standards, which means that you believe in absolutes, which means that you believe in a God who is absolutely good or absolutely evil.

There are practical reasons for holding political officials to a "higher standard." I don't like to listen to Sean Hannity, but my mom does, and one thing that Sean Hannity loves to point out is that world leaders should behave better than the proletariat and the bourgeois to prevent blackmail and scummy emotional manipulation resulting in intricately arranged political maneuvers to bring down the republic.

(Although I am independent, I staunchly believe the States is a republic, not a democracy. But maybe that's a remnant from my Victor Hugo, I-want-to-marry-a-student-insurrectionist days. Vive la republique!)

(One of my favorite parts in Les Miserables is when Marius and his old-school, very establishment grandfather have a showdown, just before Marius leaves home and joins Les Amis de l'ABC. Marius is really furious, and he thunders at M. Gillenormand, "Down with the Bourbons and the great hog Louis XVIII.!" The next line is, "Louis XVIII. had been dead for four years; but it was all the same to him.")

(Les Miserables is a wonderfully funny book, but I feel like I'm the only person who pays as much attention to its humor as its tragedy.)

Some people, by the way, think David Vitter is a heel and we're all heels and should be held to the same standard. These people are not humanists.