A powerful opinion piece in The Irish Times on Wednesday by Kathy Sheridan.
It should be read from the housetops and in every post primary school in Ireland.
It may be a good week to recall a time when one of America’s most notorious, feared political bullies was brought down by shame. Joseph McCarthy was a little-known junior senator in 1950 when the young demagogue on the make saw Americans primed to fear reds under the bed and sniffed opportunity. Read liberalism for communism and the similarities between then and now are uncanny.
McCarthy portrayed himself as the fearless underdog battling the “weak on communism” coastal establishment, the tireless tormentor of the “traitorous” deep state. He was the master of the shameless, evidence-free big lie, with a talent for feeding sensationalist headlines to the media just before their deadlines. His powerful platform as chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was used to pursue witch-hunts, disregard civil liberties, destroy reputations and shatter lives by intimidation and blacklisting.
It was his appearance before a mass live television audience in the 1954 Army- McCarthy hearings that marked the public turn against him. The line that went down in political and legal legend came when he accused the army chief counsel Joseph Welch of having a named young communist sympathiser on the firm’s legal staff. An outraged Welch replied: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
McCarthy’s reputation never recovered. Yet, by today’s standards, Welch’s line would hardly count as a mild rebuke. Back then, Americans just needed someone to spell out in simple language what seemed like a universal truth – that even violent partisan differences might blur, but must never destroy, an innate sense of decency towards fellow humans.
A similar tipping point in Irish politics occurred during the Mahon tribunal 18 years ago, when Bertie Ahern’s loyal secretary was confronted with evidence contradicting her boss’s claims about cash deposits. She broke down, whispering, “I just want to go home.” Ahern resigned within a few weeks, but was there shame?
The hope that someone will feel ashamed of themselves or be socially shamed in the absence of other sanctions feels old-fashioned now but, in an age of admit nothing, deny everything, claim victory/vindication, it’s all there is.
The Special Criminal Court’s reference to Gerard Hutch as the leader of the Hutch family – and by definition a source of misery and suffering to his people – might have been expected to slow his swagger and discourage his enablers. Still, he radiates the cockiness of a winner in his starry appearance at a show about his life and a mooted run for election.
Sinn Féin’s shameless simultaneous denial-celebration of its history as the IRA’s political wing was perfectly captured last week by Matt Carthy while discussing the Middle East crisis, when he said with a straight face: “I can’t think of an instance where bombing a country ended up resulting in a better situation.”
When Kristi Noem – the savagely incompetent secretary of Homeland Security, who oversaw the operation that saw Minnesotans shot dead in the streets – became Trump’s first cabinet ejection last week, it was not out of shame on either side; it was because she offended Trump’s twisted vanity. If shame was a factor, the party’s senators who showed their forensic questioning skills against Noem would be applying the same rigour to their ultimate boss, asking about his many appearances in the Epstein files, why he refuses to utter the mildest criticism of Vladimir Putin and why, in his jolly way, he was virtually admitting to war crimes this week.
But “shame” is no longer up to the job.
When Barack Obama used the word following Trump’s reposted video depicting the Obamas as apes, it just felt sad and futile. “There doesn’t seem to be any shame about this among people who used to feel like you had to have some sort of decorum. And a sense of propriety and respect for the office . . .”
The world would laugh now at the notion of Trump being asked Welch’s question, “Have you no sense of decency?”
The sense of shame that comes from breaching certain social standards depends on a tacit social consensus of what it means to be a decent human being. Standards shift as societies evolve. It’s not long since this country had a vast array of social engineers happily weaponising shame as a device to control women and groups such as gay men. It was only when that treatment itself became a source of shame that social change became possible. It is telling that some of the same engineers are now fanboys and girls of Trump.
At the root of it is the question of why shame burdens some so much more than others. We know why Gisèle Pelicot felt initially muted with shame while her rapists exuded rage rather than shame in court; society had conditioned women to feel that way. But why, say, have the Brexit-supporting hedge funders and industrialists never been shamed into admitting their catastrophic error?
Because without shame, everything is possible. And that’s why Donald Trump will get his bowl of shamrock next week.
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