Parenting in 2020: Using Donald Trump as a moral object lesson

Before bedtime, discussion with my son turned to talk of morals and ethics. I want him to aspire to both justice and compassion -- and sometimes (according to my Mennonite understanding of how the world should work) that means having compassion for people who act unjustly.*

*I don't expect other people, especially victims of injustice, to do this. It's how I roll.

Talk turned to Donald Trump, of course.

How do you have compassion for Donald Trump?

My usual approach -- when I am the person I want to be -- is to look for redeeming qualities in the person I find frustrating. Most people are a mix! Even many genuinely terrible people have some redeeming quality.

I cannot discern a redeeming quality in Donald Trump. Not as a public man. Not as a private person, at least from what I know of him that way. (Which is too much.)

Which means I don't know how to have compassion for Donald Trump. 

It's not a matter of him deserving it. It's a matter of me practicing an ethic that I aspire to. And he defies my understanding of how to implement my ethic.

So my answer to my son is: This is where I fall short of my values. I don't know how to have compassion for Donald Trump. All I can tell you is to aspire to justice, and try not to let your anger at injustice -- however justified that anger may be -- warp your soul.

Mostly, I would like not to have to have Donald Trump be an object lesson in my parenting.

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