Monday, August 14, 2017

values ≠ morals

There's an article from Harper's Bazaar floating around the interwebs, which argues that if you should happen to find yourself married to a Trump supporter you should divorce them. Here's a part with only minimal hyperbole:
Supporting Trump at this point does not indicate a difference of opinions. It indicates a difference of values. Values aren’t like hobbies or interests. They don’t change over time, and they more or less define who you are. Trump’s administration may have been, for some of us, a time when what we value has become much clearer to us.
Re: Trump divorces, all I have to say is that people get divorced for a lot of stupid reasons and we hardly need another one.

Also, can I pause here to kvetch about how writers (who are presumably paid to choose their words carefully?) use the word values when what they actually mean is morals. Value pertains first of all to the monetary worth of something. So the word you use to justify the price of the used bathing suit you just posted on eBay should not be the same one you use to discuss morality. I know that using value as a synonym for moral is here to stay—thank you, Nietzsche—I just wish that writers would, you know, think about words more.

Anyway, all of that aside, my true beef here is with the idea that people's morals don't change. I'm going to take the author seriously and assume she really believes this. If so, then she's suggesting that she was born with the correct political and moral ideas and that absolutely nothing has changed since. (I would really like to speak to her middle school classmates to verify this.) Or maybe let's be generous and say that by the age of 20 she was morally developed enough to be able to make just decisions about absolutely everything for the rest of her life. I guess in a perfect world this is conceivable—after all, she could be Jesus!

And Jesus would be totally chill about your divorce if it was for totally justifiable Trump Reasons, right? And if you don't currently agree with this lady about Trump (for any reason) then he would totally understand that you are not just irredeemable during this election cycle, you are irredeemable forever. You cannot change! Not even if she tries really, really hard to persuade you one afternoon on twitter! No. If you voted for Trump you deserve to be divorced and, most likely, expelled from the Republic. This woman is clearly the soul of moral probity. You should most definitely take marriage advice from her. 

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