A kick in the head, Part 2

In the aftermath of Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer, Republicans all over Washington are being asked this question: “If you were running for public office, would you take a meeting with someone you were told was spearheading a Russian government plan to boost your campaign, and had dirt on your opponent he wanted to share?”

Their answers have been mixed, ranging from Senator Orrin Hatch, who said “no,” to our faux-president Donald J. Trump, who said, “I think many people would have held that meeting.” Of course you do, Donald. Of course you do. Senator Lindsay Graham said he’d call the FBI, but Paul Ryan, our esteemed Speaker of the House, refused to comment on a question he called “hypothetical.”

Seriously, Paul? Is that question so hard for you to answer? Are you into the slime that deep?

Apparently Mr. Ryan didn’t read an essay I wrote a few weeks ago in which I talked about knowing right from wrong. It started out like this:

Walking down the street you see a homeless person sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against a wall. You have basically three choices:

* You can give him some money for food.

* You can ignore him and walk on by.

* You can stop, mock him for being a loser and then kick him in the head.

That essay was mainly about health care legislation, but the premise still applies. In the battle of good versus evil, no one is required to give the homeless man money to be considered “good.” You could do nothing but walk on by and still be considered a good person, but you lose that label as soon as you kick the poor man in the head.

Meeting with a foreign agent from an unfriendly nation to collect dirt on a political rival during a campaign seems pretty cut and dried. It’s illegal, immoral and un-American. Doing so puts you on the wrong end of the right/wrong continuum, and anybody with half a brain and anything resembling a moral compass would know that right off the top.

And therein lies the problem.

As I wrote in an earlier essay, it’s not wrong to want other people to be the best they can be and to always do the right thing. It’s only wrong if we’re naïve enough to expect it. I don’t think it’s naïve to want our political leaders to know right from wrong and, faced with the choice, to act accordingly, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that many of them don’t … and won’t.

There's nothing hypothetical about that. It’s a fact. Just one more kick in the head.