Lusting After Women, In One's Heart

NEARLY FIFTY YEARS after the fact, it is amazing how much fuss the American media, and indeed the American people made of the fact that president James Earl Carter confided to Playboy magazine, in an interview, that he had indeed commited the sin of lusting after women, in his heart, as he put it. He was sort of tricked into it, in a way. The interviewer was talking about Carter's "Born Again" religious status, implying that Carter considered himself perfect becasue of it. The future president quickly dismissed the suggestion by giving an example in which he had indeed been less than "perfect". This was the fall of nineteen seventy six, Carter was running for president, in the middle of the campaign against Gerald Ford. Ford was considered a weak and vulnerable president, in office only as a stop gap until the nation could purge itself of the discredited Richard Nixon by voting Ford out of office. Carter was way ahead in the polls, until the interview. Then, he dropped about fifteen percent, and the election turned out to be much closer than expected. Being sexually attracted to women other than his wife, was by all accounts, just about the only thing even remotely sinful that Carter ever did. That assessment holds up and intensifies among historians as the decades pass since his administration. Prominent historians today consider Jimmy Carter to have been among the most decent and intelligent people to ever have been president. Also, many historians are pointing out that the Carter presidency was characterized by accomplishments, more than by failures. Amazing, that a simple, harmless, obvious and honest statement, that he, as a heteroxexual male, was attracted to women, could almost end a presidential campaign. Contrast that with today, in which we the American people recently elected to the presidency a person who has been convicted of multiple crimes, who was witnessed by millions of people trying to overthrow the American government by inciting a violent mob, and who at the beginning of his political caeer bragged openly about being a sexual predator, a comment which was heard by millions of Americans. Trump has also been convicted of sexual harassment, and has paid big bucks because of it. It almost seems that the American people, in voting for Jimmy Cater, were looking for a saint, a saint perhaps as a cure for the criminal Nixon. Trump, on the other hand, seems to gain more support from his supporters the more criminal activity is divulged and made known by him. Trump supporters seem to support Trump because he is a criminal and reprobate, not in spite of it. Have our moral standards really declined that much in fifty years? People, as they grow older, often tend to complain that moral standards throghout society are declining, that in bygone decades, way back when they were children, that the world and the country was a more moral place. It seems as if a sizeable percentage of every generation for the past several thousand years have maintained that attitude. Plato, in the fourth century B.C., twenty four hundred years ago, complained that the young people in ancient Athens were morally deficient compared with previous generations of Greeks. The Bible deals with this theme. Obviously, there is more to civilization than a continuous, downward spiral in societal moral standards. Whether there is any truth in this alleged chronic moral societal decline, other forces must be at work as well. If there weren't, then by now humanity would have disintegrated into nmitigated, uncivilized savagery, which, some might argue, it indeed very nearly has. That we have devolved from Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump in a mere half century, however, is not a positive indicator of where we are headed, and does not bode well for our future prospects.