Take politics out of the equation, and look at ourselves on a human-to-human level. I am sure we are not all attractive on a scale of one to 10. But we act as if that is all that matters in life—the trophy wife, the trophy car or the trophy house. 

Since when have we become so self-transactional and shallowly materialistic? Christ said it best, when he called out the scribes and Pharisees as “hypocrites!...like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”(Matthew 23:13-27)

Do we now look at stroke patients as lesser than the rest of us? At the handicapped and less physically fortunate as less than ourselves? If your mom or wife had a stroke, would you make fun of her? I read some of the comments from our discourteous public discourse and it makes my heart ache. 

This is what Hitler did to the Jews. He created a whole indoctrination system, teaching people that the Jews, the handicapped, the intellectually challenged, the Gypsies or less fortunate gay men and non-Aryan people were less than human—vermin to be exact.  

This was all part of a so-called moral crusade to racially and culturally purify Germany. 

This is morality that has run amuck, and is poisoned by a doctrine of hate. So when we objectify people on looks alone, or on limitations instead of the content of their character, then we are on a very slippery slope to all-encompassing hate. 

Why are we doing this to each other? For whom? For a man who has so little self-worth that he has to belittle people in every way to make himself look good. Who judges people, not as people of value, but only as people of value to him. Once he is done with his transactional use of you, he not only abandons you, but calls for your death. 

Loyalty to him is only a one-way street, never reciprocal or based on honor or respect. 

We have debased ourselves to his age-level of immature sensibilities. He has to be the winner at all costs and everyone else is a loser. Even the dead soldiers in our sacred cemeteries he considers losers. Why? Because he has no concept of honor, duty and service to anything other than himself. He considers you a loser, because he has conned you as one of his possessions. Once he is done with you, he will discard you as yesterday’s news. 

People like this have no moral grounding and as such, they bring everyone else down to the abyss that lies below. If we think we exclusively have all the answers, we are deluding ourselves. 

The problems we face are complex and need to be approached with humility, wonderment and curiosity. Simple answers and scapegoating are the easy way out. We need to look at ourselves with the same critical eye we judge others with. 

It is so easy to blame everyone else for our problems. It is much harder to band together with people we do not agree with, to find our common humanity. To solve problems in cooperation and with a sense of fairness and mutual purpose. 

Vito DiBiasi lives in Dingman Township, PA.