Are you a professional? Might you be a doctor, lawyer, psychologist, professor, or…? If so, you are well aware of professional requirements regarding confidentiality when talking to clients and or other colleagues with or about clients.
You are also aware of the fluidity of social and professional conversations at times. You might, for example, professionally discuss a client’s condition with a colleague of yours while at a dinner party; having a professional/confidential discussion in a nonprofessional/casual social setting. Yet, because of that social event and professional connection, you gain insight and go back to your office professionally better equipped to deal with your client. Talking about your client with a colleague during a dinner party, is that wrong, bad, or unethical? NO.
Reverse that. You are in your professional setting, at the office, in the lab, or in the conference room of the institution for whom you work, and you have a casual/social conversation with a colleague or friend/acquaintance with whom you engage in pleasant personal social chatter. Is that wrong, unethical, a bad thing to do, because you’re “at work”? I don’t think so.
Lines of communication between two parties, especially professionals, are often fluid and sometimes blur the sharp lines between professional/confidential and personal/confidential. Life is that way. Relationships are like that. Few things are cut and dry, this or that, black or white, in normal everyday interaction—it’s the messiness of life’s drama playing itself out in our everyday lives.
Hence, regarding Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, as is always the case, the two extreme reactive positions to the email scandal are exactly that—extreme and reactive!
On the one hand, Hillary haters will never let it go. They paint the worst possible picture, saying things like she was not only foolish, but dangerous and criminal in her actions regarding the use of a private email server and the deleting of her emails, and so-on and so-forth. Hillary supporters, on the other hand, see nothing wrong with what she did, saying that it’s par for the course; she’s totally innocent.
As usual, the reality is somewhere in between. She wasn’t necessarily criminal-acting in her behavior nor was she necessarily dangerously damaging to national security; but neither was she being smart; it was indeed a foolish and unwise decision on her part. All humans do stupid things from time to time and make poor choices while performing their professional duties at times—not necessarily due to evil and corrupt motives. And that’s perhaps the real perspective that should be given to this scandal.
But, of course, Hilary detractors won’t accept such a normal, boring but balanced perspective like that. They want blood. So, what should have been a minor story has become a story that continues to feed into itself—more emails released bringing more details for review, resulting in more story generating headlines to sell the news. And yet, there’s no real substantial new news in any of it. It’s a whirlwind of busy talk couched in a hurricane of accusations in an attempt at character assassination.
It’s ridiculous, laughable, and sad that this kind of thing has become our American political process. Apparently we can’t seem to put things in a balanced perspective. We seem to continually buy into hyperbole and believe the extremes.
And so, it is said: “Hilary should be put in jail!” Really?! If we were to scrutinize every politician in Washington the way Hilary Clinton has been scrutinized, I’m sure that 95% or more of our politicians should be put in jail—if measured by the same standard.
My point is this: We voters have created an extremely polarized political arena that ignores reality checks and it’s the main reason why we also have a congress that gets little to nothing of significance done anymore. All we are allowed to hear or talk about are the extremes: So, now it’s all about Trump lovers/ Hilary haters versus Hilary adorers and Trump thrashers. And, depending on which side you’re on, one may very well be Satan’s evil agent, while the other may be God’s greatest gift on earth.
When it comes to American politics, we leave reality behind and enter the Twilight Zone.
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