Written by michael payne   

In America today, there is a great divide between those who still abide by the principles of ethics and morals and those who are determined to make them irrelevant and meaningless. Ethics and morals, quite obviously, are a great hindrance to the power brokers in our government, the financial sector, and the corporate world whose sole objective is the accumulation of money and power.

Let’s clearly define the terms ethics and morals and the distinction between them. Ethics and morals both relate to good versus bad or right versus wrong. Ethics involve standards or codes of behavior that have been established within a group of which a person is a member; typically in the business world, the medical profession, or the justice system.

Morals, on the other hand, involve an individual’s personal conformance to a body of rules established within a society based on right versus wrong behavior. Said in a slightly different way, morals define personal character, while ethics stress a social system in which those morals are applied.

So in the following discussion the issues at hand can be considered to be ones involving either ethics or morals or the combination of the two.

As we examine these issues and their impact on this nation, the most obvious place to start is with the U.S. government, that part of America in which the deterioration and unraveling of the principles of ethics and morality are on display for all to see; where greed, corruption and personal interests have now completely set aside the normally accepted standards of group conduct and personal behavior that once prevailed.

A large majority of Americans were brought up to believe that those who inhabit the Congress and the White House generally followed the principles of ethics and morality in conducting the business of this nation. How could we have been so naïve? We now know that is a fallacy and those principles of determining right versus wrong are rarely, if ever, used in making important decisions in this government.

Many of the most critical problems this country faces are not being addressed, let alone being solved, because this Congress no longer follows these principles. This body of the government and a very sizable portion of its members are so intent on pursuing and promoting the interests of those who fund their election campaigns and their own that the thought of adhering to these principles never enters their minds.

So as a result of this absence of ethical and moral considerations in congressional deliberations what we are seeing is a massive deliberate misappropriation of taxpayer dollars in which:

*Hundreds of billions of dollars are appropriated for the giant defense industry and the proliferation of senseless wars while, at the same time, there is a deep set resistance to funding job creation, so badly needed by millions of Americans who desperately need work.

*Hundreds of billions of dollars went into the TARP bailout of Wall Street that also included foreign banks, but the necessary funding for rebuilding our national infrastructure, which would create millions of new jobs, has been given no major priority.

*Egypt has received an average of $2 billion in U.S. aid since 1979, most of it going to its military. These taxpayer dollars would better be used to fund our rapidly deteriorating system of education.

*Israel received $3.4 billions of aid in 2013 while all efforts to increase the minimum wage for American workers are regularly defeated.

*The highly profitable oil corporations receive billions in subsidies while Congress cuts billions from the Food Stamp program.

The conduct and behavior of this Congress can only be described as appalling and deplorable. An increasing portion of its members are a disgrace to this country and should be subjected to the scorn and derision of the American people for the unmitigated damage that they are inflicting upon it.

How about the White House and the two presidents who have occupied it in the 21st century? It’s becoming very evident that when a U.S. president is elected this person must leave the principles of ethics and morality outside the Oval Office. There is no way that an American president can follow these normally accepted standards of conduct when placed under the control of the combination of the embedded Washington Establishment and the ultra-powerful Military-Industrial Complex.

That’s why under G.W. Bush this nation conducted the unconscionable and unjustifiable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the use of torture and renditions, and the launching of deadly drones in attacks against sovereign nations. And that’s why President Obama has taken the use of these drones to even higher levels, causing the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians in the process. Neither of these presidents hesitated in ordering these attacks even though they knew innocents were needlessly losing their lives. And neither has ever indicated the slightest publicly stated remorse for these contemptible actions.

Ethics and morals are on the verge of becoming extinct in this country and society. It’s as if there is no longer a place for them. Of the many discussions and debates I have heard on TV or read about in newspapers I really can’t recall many of them identifying the absence of these principles as the central cause of various disturbing political or social conditions. Typically, these discussions are dominated by finger pointing and arguments over opposing political ideologies.

We watch as President Obama strongly supports the actions of the NSA, the National Security Agency which blatantly pursues its massive program of spying on the American people, calling it absolutely necessary. Indications are that it has no intention of making any changes to its aggressive agenda of monitoring all forms of communications in this county. And this president strongly stands behind those who run it even though he knows that what they are doing represents a clear invasion of the Constitutional rights of citizens’ privacy.

Let’s discuss Wall Street, the home of the masters of financial manipulation; a place where the principles of ethics and morals have been persona non grata for some time. Five big banks control the financial sector of this country and much of the world. Their policies and actions are clearly guided by the lust for greater and greater profits and they will bend or break any and all rules and regulations to achieve their objectives.

They have created derivatives, those risky and often toxic financial instruments that are said to amount to hundreds of trillions of dollars; they created the fraudulent mortgages that caused millions of Americans to lose their homes to foreclosures; and then after their reckless actions ended in the 2008 financial crisis, they shamelessly accepted bailouts by the government. And we know, of course, that these banksters who just happen to “own” the Congress and the White House will be, without question, given free license to continue to use these deceitful practices which endanger the financial stability of this nation.

Their CEOs are, in effect, under a “government protection program” which effectively grants them immunity from prosecution for white collar criminal acts. They are making a mockery of the principles of ethics and honorable business practices. And what’s really ironic is that no matter how many devious practices that these Big Five banks foist on the public, many millions of Americans continue to do business with them, totally ignoring their nefarious conduct.

These corrupted politicians, the Wall Street manipulators, and the many corporate CEO’s who have thrown American workers under the bus, and those American presidents who have done virtually nothing to remedy any of these situations, are a product of this society. Did these individuals, upon entering political office or high levels in the business world, suddenly divest themselves of those principles when they came on the job or were they already in that condition? In either case, what then does this say about our society?

It says that this society can be thought of as a breeding ground that sends these kinds of ethically and morally deficient individuals into seats of power in Washington, on Wall Street and in the corporate towers where this kind of behavior is generously rewarded. In effect these individuals are a direct reflection of this society itself, a sad commentary to say the least.

And while we continue to criticize and castigate those in the Congress for their failures to do what is right for this country, we keep re-electing them; of course that’s probably because we have little or no alternative choices, for those Americans whose principles of conduct are beyond reproach want nothing to do with this polluted political process.

We may have no use for the swindlers on Wall St. or the profit-crazed CEOs but many of us keep investing our money with the former and buying the products of the latter. If we had the courage of our convictions we would initiate massive boycotts against the worst offenders and drive them out of business. Nothing of the sort is happening.

When we think about this nation’s most critical problems; the endless wars, the monumental national debt, our stagnant economy, a dysfunctional government, the deterioration of our education system, joblessness, homelessness, massive inequality of income, among other troubling conditions, there is little doubt that all of them can be attributed, in one way or another, to the decline of the principles of ethics and morality within this society.

And the worst part of this dilemma and very troubling condition is that as it continues to metastasize it will become permanent and irreversible.

Michael Payne