Oh, the Sanctimony

The world is awash is sanctimony right now.  In the 80’s, almost all of the sanctimony came from the right, particularly from evangelical Christian Republicans.  Their sanctimony, led by folks like Jerry Falwell, freaked liberals out.  A mere 13 years ago, Kevin Phillips wrote American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21^st Century.   Fast forward to today, only the peril of borrowed money remains.  Radical evangelicalism and dependence on foreign energy have mostly faded into the background.  Today’s self-righteousness comes mostly from the left.

The current icon of individual sanctimony is Jim Comey, former head of the F.B.I.  He is full bore into his book promotion/bash Trump tour that is mostly rationalizing and justifying the handling of his investigation of Hillary Clinton and alternatively smearing Trump directly or through innuendo (“I can’t say whether prostitutes peed on a mattress in front of Trump.  It might have happened.”).  

The entire tiresome tour is an attempt to vault himself onto a higher moral plane, and, indeed, the title of his book—A Higher Loyalty—hits you over the head with the purpose of his publicity tour (which the MSM is more than happy to oblige).  Along with his book tour, Comey has announced that he intends to teach ethics and leadership to further cement himself as a self-appointed authority in the subject.  But let’s take a step back and take a true measure of his authority.  How did the F.B.I. has actually perform under his leadership?  Putting aside his contempt for Donald Trump for a moment, how did the agency do and how did the people under him perform when it mattered?   Is the agency more esteemed, more respected, more effective today because of his leadership?

The answer is pretty obvious. 

Law enforcement generally has a dual mandate: (1) Protect us, and (2) Play it straight.   Comey’s F.B.I. failed miserably on both fronts.  Its actions with respect to the Pulse nightclub shooting was noteworthy because the shooter’s father was an F.B.I. informant, the shooter, Omar Mateen, was known to the F.B.I., and they permitted his wife to leave the country after the shooting occurred (although she was subsequently acquitted of being an accessory).  None of this smells quite right.  Similarly, at Parkland High School, Nikolas Cruz was known to the F.B.I., was waiving red flags and self-identifying as a school shooter on social media.  The agency admitted that it “failed to follow protocol,” in responding to the threat represented by Cruz.  The Las Vegas shooting was yet another fumble by the F.B.I. and months later, we still have no clarity on the incident.  Inexplicably, the F.B.I. left the shooter’s house unguarded the night after the incident and it was broken into with the thieves possibly removing evidence relevant to the deadliest mass murder in U.S. history.  The F.B.I. did not acquit itself well in any of these high profile cases.

The McCabe fiasco has now deteriorated into a cat fight among Comey, McCabe and Loretta Lynch, with each one accusing the other of being untruthful.   And McCabe is now suing Donald Trump for defamation.  Of course, you still have the mess with Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the anti-Trump lovers who left an entire trail of unbecoming emails that destroyed any notion that they were playing it straight.

No matter what your views of Trump and no matter how this plays out, the head of the most powerful law enforcement agency in the world should not be picking sides in a political fight.  Last week, Comey (whose entire family marched in the Women’s March) came out and said he wasn’t a Republican anymore, a revelation about as surprising as Barry Manilow’s announcement last year that he was gay.  Who could have guessed?

Comey’s shameless self-promotion now make it difficult to distinguish him from Stormy Daniels.  And if you consider the performance of the agency he led and its people in the areas that count—stopping bad guys and playing it straight—Comey’s better option would be to lay low and box up the sanctimony. 

On the corporate side, preachy Starbucks also did a pratfall last week.   Starbucks has held itself out as a progressive paragon in the corporate world, and you now routinely get a little social justice with your latte.   It took a stand on immigration, defiantly announcing that it would hire illegal aliens (prompting a social media outcry –what about veterans).    CEO Howard Schultz jumped into race relations a few years ago with its RaceTogether initiative (in response to the narrative around Michael Brown) and actively encouraged its employees to talk to its customers about race.   The company has piously incorporated all of the social justice/sustainability talking points  into its corporate mission.   The company that fastidiously tailors your coffee drink and wouldn’t dream of putting artificial sweetener in it without your permission routinely serves up a dose of virtue signaling whether or not you have asked for it.  Sometimes you just want a cup o’ jo.

So it’s hard not to smirk a little to see Starbucks get hoisted on its own petard.   Last week when two young African Americans were asked to leave a store and then arrested when they would not, the heads at the executive offices of the virtuous Seattle based company nearly exploded.  Howard Schultz was immediately on the news accusing his manager of at least “unconscious bias,” and terminated her even though it appears that she followed company policy with respect to loitering patrons that don’t buy coffee.

And on top of this, a leader of the women’s march is trying to organize a boycott of Starbucks due to a partnership with a Jewish group.  When it rains social justice, it pours.

In response, Starbucks is closing ALL of its stores for a day for mandatory training.   Think about that for a second.  It is 2018 and a major national restaurant chain is shutting down to teach its people how to treat African Americans.  Excuse me, but I thought our society had settled this out about half  a century ago.

Not that I am a little sympathetic to Starbucks’s plight.  With 8,200 locations in the U.S., it was inevitable that some newsworthy incident somewhere someday would crop up.  Somebody somewhere would find something icky in their drink.   Some Starbucks manager would be caught selling drugs out of the back.   Some supplier would be found breaking the law.  But Starbucks got caught in the crosshairs of the very issue it was impliedly lecturing us all about.

To be sure, Starbucks has a difficult line to walk.   As a place that is known as a business meeting and hangout place, it’s difficult judgment call to know when to weed out “free riders” that are simply loitering without buying coffee.   Public libraries have an analogous problem with unkempt, smelly homeless people that nearly take up residence and by their presence dissuade other patrons from coming in.  The trick is to enforce policies uniformly across stores and especially ensure that rules aren’t enforced differently ever based on race.  Ever.  One the other hand, you don’t want to get played either by people that demand special treatment or exempt from policies BECAUSE THEY ARE BLACK.  Of course, as of today, protesters are griping that Starbucks isn’t going far enough—it will never be enough once you start playing the corporate identity politics game.

The company that moralizes, preaches, and is so inclusive that it has banished any hint of Christmas from its holiday cups has to take a time out to train its people on how to treat blacks.  Not Chick-Fil-A.  Not Hobby Lobby.  Not even Cracker Barrel or any of the other companies that progressives are contemptuous of.   The virtuous Starbucks is now being devoured by black activists and the Women’s March. 

One of the most openly socially self- congratulating progressive companies is tangled up in how it treats black customers and the former head of the top law enforcement agency in the world who is teaching ethics is himself being investigated.

Sanctimony often bites back.