The joys of hypocrisy

Hypocrisy has always been with us but it has really blossomed over the past few decades.

Some prime examples are the people who believe passionately that the government should be spending immense sums on mass transit but who have have never caught a bus or a train in their lives. There are people who are True Believers in the coming Climate Change apocalypse but they don’t seem to think that their beach houses in Malibu will be affected by rising sea levels. There are the passionate antiracists who live in towns that are 98% white.

There are libertarians who seem quite happy to enjoy the benefits of living in a society with a government rather than heading off into the wilderness to put their beliefs in rugged individualism into practice. There are American libertarians who are very happy to make use of America’s impressive national highway system, paid for by the taxpayer.

There are Zionist Jews who don’t want to give up their apartments in Manhattan to move to Tel Aviv. Liberals who think that intolerance is evil and believe that people who disagree with them should be sent to prison. People who think everybody should be free to love whomever they like but they’ll go berserk if their boyfriend decides to put that into practice by loving a younger hotter woman.

There are conservatives who claim to be horrified by the degeneracy of popular culture and particularly the degeneracy of Hollywood but they’ll still take the family to see the latest Hollywood blockbuster, oblivious to the fact that they’re funding the degeneracy of which they claim to disapprove. And they’ll still keep their cable TV connection, even as they complain about the anti-conservative propaganda on cable TV.

You can’t avoid a certain degree of hypocrisy. One man’s hypocrisy is another man’s flexibility. But it is healthy to at least be aware of one’s own hypocrisies.