Analysis and Opinion

By JoeAm

Honor is a quality of character that attaches to moral guideposts such as patriotism, truth, or courage. It is appreciation attached to people who act well. The problem is that honor can be relative. For example, it's possible to be honorable by supporting insurrection, if you are a rebel . . . or aTrump fanatic. You are honorable to your cause, which is, by other standards, extraordinarily dishonorable.

Well, if that is confusing, good. Because that's the point. If we don't have a common moral framework, we can't have anything but situational loyalty, and situational honor. If lies supplant truth, in favor of loyalty, then honor goes away, because we can't find it. If capitalist greed supplants democracy or the idea that every citizen should be cherished, then where do we find our honor? In making big bucks like Bezos and Zukerberg while consigning laborers to slave-like conditions or family members to trolls and propagandists? In overthrowing democracy?

A nation is a collection of people led by a chosen few who define what honor means. Democracies are loyal to a process of inclusion and the ideals of equality, fairness, and caretaking. Authoritarian states are loyal to people. Honor flows from loyalty to specific men or women.

In the US, Trump Republicans are autocrats. They are out to take down democracy. Their honor is out of touch with that of the Constitution. What has happened is that the moral guideposts are no longer consistent from one American to another. The division is serious and personal.

The Philippines is the same. Autocrats Duterte and Marcos seek to undermine the typical norms of honor: loyalty to the Constitution and truth.

If we are conflicted about honor, we will surely fight one another.

Social media make fighting easier and democratic togetherness harder. Facebook and other media bring hostility and lies directly into our lives. When we dealt face to face and could look one another in the eyes, deceit was not so easy.

Now it is.

So the outlook is grim. Honor is dead, or at least consistent, truth-based constitutional honor is dead. A strange dark honor, a form of emotionalized worship, is rising.

I find it ugly.

If we stay on this course, honor in the future will be whatever some dishonorable lying manipulator says it should be.

We need to re-dedicate ourselves to truth and honor based on the Constitution. And have no patience for liars and manipulators loyal only to persons.

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Photo from Rappler article on proposed Constitutional amendments to bring federalism to the Philippines. The bottle of white-out is old technology, I suppose. But clever. Article at: https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/iq/iatf-proposed-amendments-1987-philippine-constitution