On Shame, Shamelessness and Secrecy

This week’s crypto-coin DJT dinner is a good place to begin. The uber-rich, buying a product of no inherent value, that represents one thing: their purchase of influence, power and access to the man who runs our country.

Shameful? Yes, certainly by my definition of the word.

But the word shame has a complicated history. One hundred years ago, it was most often used to describe the secret burning guilt felt at betraying your own conscience, values, your sense of right and wrong. Shame was something we tried to hide from the world, with lies, deception or pretense, but we felt it as disappointment in ourselves, and fear that discovery would lead to loss of reputation and respect. It was culturally defined, at least in part, and attached to norms, customs and etiquette as well as sin and illegal behavior.

Then mental health teased out shame from guilt, defining shame as feeling bad about “who you are” as opposed to guilt about “what you did” or how you behaved. Shame became a sense of personal defectiveness we needed to overcome.

In the process we made shame itself a bad thing, a thing to be erased in the service of wellness and good self-esteem. We are “good people who make bad choices”, or traumatized people whose behavior can be explained, and often excused, by our own stories, our wounds, our life experience.

Now we have moved into the decade of shamelessness. Last night’s dinner is only the latest example of the brazen violation of rules, norms and ethics that hold a culture together. Its brazenness alone has some of us confused. Is it shameful if I do it out in the open, and refuse to feel bad about what I did? Is it shameful if I celebrate my choices, and flaunt them with defiance? Is the lack of secrecy alone a reason no one can accuse me doing something shameful?

DJT is a master of this confusion. Without a functioning adult superego, there is little about which he feels personal shame. Little that would cause him acute pain even if the world knew nothing about it. He functions at the lower levels of the moral development chart, where discovery is feared only because it could lead to external consequence like punishment, but not because of any internal behavioral norms he expects himself to meet.

“I am ashamed of myself” is a sentence I cannot imagine crossing his lips, yet for most of us it is the essence of what shame means. I disappointed myself; I embarrassed the person I aspire to be, believe myself to be, expect myself to be. The reaction of others is a secondary cost, and even those who “get away” without discovery still carry their personal shame as a burden, sometimes for a lifetime.

This is so embedded in our understanding, we often use secrecy as a test. In court, secrecy can be admitted as evidence of a guilty mind, even when the defendant argues that he believed his behavior was not illegal. In the world of normal adults, we look for deceit as evidence of shame, and awareness of guilt.

Now, we have given the most powerful position in our country to man without the capacity for shame. And we have given him the tools to sell the fruits of our country to the highest bidder, enriching himself as the middleman. Finally, we have given him a forum to do what he does best: convince others that shamelessness is worthy, that it is righteous, that it is the right of every American to take as much as he can get, to ignore the needs of others, and to refuse to apologize for any of it. Shamelessness is now a badge of manliness.

Yes, the dinner held last night was probably illegal, unconstitutional, and a violation of his oath as President, I will leave that to the lawyers to define, to prosecute and to prove. But it was also deeply shameful. A disgusting perversion of the power accorded to a man who respects nothing and no one except himself and his own aggrandizement. This is the indictment that means the most to me.

The is the crime that should enrage us, and disappoint us, and for which we, every one of us as honorable Americans, should hold him responsible.