Friday Takes: Moral Turpitude Edition

FMCS, The Ethicist, Brene Brown, Beth Allison Barr, Muh Authenticity, the Silence of God, Read the Comments

Ah, Friday. What a week. And what a morning. Had to leap about and jump-start a car first thing, then run a kid somewhere, then get gas, and then turn the dryer on and off a few times. So now I’m back here. Where was I? Oh yes! Takes. Let’s see if there are any.

File: Vanity fair (1900) (14578086579).jpg - Wikimedia Commons

one

When I should have been doing something else, I was suddenly gripped by this interesting piece in the Daily Wire about a federal agency that DOGE unearthed and caused to go the way of all flesh. The article is pretty hilarious if shocking and you might want to read the whole thing. Here are a few bits:

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) occupied a nine-story office tower on D.C.’s K Street for only 60 employees, many of whom actually worked from home, prior to the pandemic. Its managers had luxury suites with full bathrooms; one manager would often be “in the shower” when she was needed, while another used her bathroom as a cigarette lounge. FMCS recorded its director as being on a years-long business trip to D.C. so he could have all of his meals and living expenses covered by taxpayers, simply for showing up to the office.

Apparently the agency had to do with something about unions, but the author wasn’t able to get a straight answer out of anyone. Here’s some more of how the money was spent:

Like something out of “The Office,” the employees spent an inordinate amount of time and money congratulating one another for being employed there and engaging in “work” that really amounted to pampering themselves.

One purchase was for $30,000 on trinkets marking employees’ anniversaries. The agency’s office was absurdly oversized, but it refused to move. It hired a consultant for a “Hallway Improvement Project” to decorate. It had an in-house gym for employees, and purchased a $1,000 TV for the gym, a $3,867 ice-maker, and a $560 stereo.

The expenses that were actually business-related were hardly better. It paid, for example, $895 “for Suzanne Nichter’s enrollment in the English Essentials: A Grammar Refresher course” and $735 “for Lakisha Steward to attend Listening and Memory Skills Development Course.”

This is my favorite part:

Many of the agency’s top employees lived outside of the typical Washington, D.C., commuting area, and only stopped in the area occasionally, in an era before telework was routine. Its CFO, Fran Leonard, would come to the office twice a week but leave by 2:00 p.m.

The agency had, inexplicably, an office in Honolulu.

Oh, and this bit:

It doled out a seemingly random assortment of giveaways to private businesses, perhaps because they were the only ones who knew the grants existed.

It gave $63,000 to a hospital that went bankrupt; $51,000 to a childcare company to help it pay government licensing fees; and $57,000 to a company to “strengthen of culture of continuous improvement to drive us to world class excellence!”

How did people come to work there and not question themselves at all:

One employee told me: “Let me give you the honest truth: A lot of FMCS employees don’t do a hell of a lot, including myself. Personally, the reason that I’ve stayed is that I just don’t feel like working that hard, plus the location on K Street is great, plus we all have these oversized offices with windows, plus management doesn’t seem to care if we stay out at lunch a long time. Can you blame me?”

Gosh, I also don’t feel like working that hard, but I haven’t ever had the option of anything more leisurely. Here’s the thing, if you’re doing something that you shouldn’t be doing, that’s literally blame-worthy.

My question would be, wouldn’t you rather have a job where you did something useful, wherein you weren’t taking advantage of others, even if you never see them with your own eyes? Because, don’t you know, a lot of people in the US and around the world are having a hard time financially. I drive by a guy who carefully rewrites the cardboard sign that he wears, for purposes of panhandling, near Planet Fitness. I think he does pretty well for himself, actually, and wouldn’t want a real job if you offered it to him. But he isn’t pretending to do anything other than he’s doing. He’s asking for money and some people are giving it to him. Whereas for the person who works for the Federal Government for heaps of money, the people giving the money, by paying taxes, are under the impression—mistakenly it seems—that the money they are giving is being used for something important and not a three-thousand dollar ice-maker.

I think most ordinary people with a vaguely functioning moral compass would say, ‘Try not to do one thing while saying you’re doing another.’ People who do that get blamed for doing it all the time. It’s a thing. It has a special name and everything. It starts with an “H” and ends in “pocrite” It’s pretty hilarious that so many people don’t appear to know this anymore.

two

I have been checking in on the New York Times Ethicist every few days, to see what he is up to over there. And wouldn’t you know it, here is a pretty fantastic question:

My husband of 52 years was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease 10 years ago. Currently I am a full-time caregiver. I hope to place my husband in a memory-care facility soon, so that I can move closer to two of my children and their children, all of whom live in Europe. My husband does not know anything about this yet. My guilt is sharp over “dumping” him in this way, even though he might be safer and more active. Do I have the moral right to put him in care and saunter off to live my own life, or do I have the moral duty to continue being his caregiver, having once promised “in sickness and in health”? I’m torn over what’s right and whose rights should prevail. — Name Withheld

I’m not going to bother you with the official answer. It kind of meanders all over the place and ends with the disappointing observation that Name Withheld should have talked about this with her husband before anything bad happened, which is certainly a good thing to do. Except for, seriously, how would you begin that convo? “Hey honey, when you get dementia, is it ok if I chuck you into a nursing home and go live near our kids in Europe?” If Matt ever asks me that question I will say, “No.” Then he won’t be confused or anything.

I love that her guilt is “sharp.” If she asked me this question, I would tell her to spend some time thinking about why that might be. Guilt isn’t always a bad thing. If you feel unhappy and miserable, it’s often because something is wrong. It may not be that you yourself have done a bad thing, but something bad—just to lean into the literary passivity of the NYTimes—has been done nearby you that affects you. It takes untangling. Do I feel bad because I did something wrong? Am I blaming myself when I shouldn’t? But while I’m asking those questions, I should be willing to face the fact that I might be the baddie in this particular situation that I’m troubled by.

So, um, yes, Name Withheld. Let me put you out of your misery. Don’t ditch your husband and get on with your life. When you took your vows to him, some spiritual verity was born into the world that effects you still. Breaking it because it’s inconvenient and disenabling you to fulfill yourself will redound to your shame and spiritual misery. It will plague you. You will have to do a lot of things to try to get away from it, like shopping or drugs or drinking or being mean to your grandchildren.

three

Here’s some really bad advice, if you have twenty minutes of your life to throw away into the dumpster fire of vanity:

What I hate about this video is her very stance and posture towards the world, which is deeply selfish. It takes the very sensible concept of being a well-differentiated, spiritually mature adult human female and swapping it out for an insecure teenager who is trundling down the broad, wide road to girl-boss-dom.

four

I finished Becoming the Pastor’s Wife yesterday. I don’t want to say too much about it because I’ve got to write a proper review and I’m worried I will ramble on and on and lose focus. But I do have one major takeaway that relates to the theme of these Takes. Barr’s primary way of judging the goodness of any ministry that women may or may not be invited into is that of independence versus dependence. If a woman does ministry that is, in some way, dependent on her husband’s role or authority, then Barr is very sad about it. Women should have the option, she thinks, of engaging in ministry “independently” of their husbands—if they want to.

And I’d just like to know why. Why is that the measure? Because in my experience of the Christian life, independence as such is not valuable to God. In fact, dependence and interdependence—both—are the way this all works. No one is “independent.” Maybe Baptists are a lot different than Anglicans, but in my ecclesiastical space, not a living soul ministers all by him or herself. The priest is dependent on the bishop, the bishops are dependent on other bishops and also on the priests whom they oversee. The priest and the laity need each other. No husband lives independently from his wife. Or, if any of them do, they are all wrong.

That’s why the image of the body is so profound and true. If any member of the body says to any other member of the body, “I don’t need you,” and “I’ll do this by myself thank you very much,” what you get is not happiness and strength but rather weakness and pain.

five

In my long week of wandering around the highways and byways of internet content consumerism, I kept seeing the word “authenticity.” It was abundant and ubiquitous. The problem with Meghan Markle, for example, is that she’s not authentic. Same with Hilaria Baldwin and Rachel Ziegler. Because, so points the moral compass of the moment, being inauthentic is wickedly wicked.

Then I read this wonderful piece which I implore you to go read, and something clicked over in my mind. I think “authentic” is the wrong word. Meghan is being her authentic self, it’s just that her authentic self is kind of awful. No, what she lacks is integrity. Integrity is that thing where you don’t lie.

Taking up the example of the peanut butter pretzels. Everyone is saying it is “inauthentic” to change their packaging. But that’s not it. It’s fine to do it if your motivations are sensible. It’s bad to pour the peanut butter pretzels from one packet into the other to make yourself look better. But a good and honest reason would be that the original wrapping is ugly and you want to put them into something prettier. But you admit this is a personal foible, like, ‘I know this is ridiculous and wasteful, but I hate the look of this packet and so I’m making a change.’ You don’t pretend that it’s a normal thing to do, or even that you’re doing it because you “care” about your “friend.”

It is possible to conform to social expectations with integrity, to avoid the horror of always having to “be yourself” in every situation. And what you do is, stay with me here, you care about others for real.

six

The readings for Morning Prayer are pretty epic today. It is the long business of how to make the garments for Aaron and his sons, and then the Wise and Foolish Virgins and the Five Talents in Matthew. But we also get to have Psalm 50, which is so wonderful, especially this bit:

¹⁸ When you saw a thief, you agreed with him, *

and you have taken part with adulterers.

¹⁹ You have let your mouth speak wickedness, *

and with your tongue you have set forth deceit.

²⁰ You sat and spoke against your brother; *

yes, and have slandered your own mother’s son.

²¹ These things you have done, and I held my tongue, *

and you thought wickedly that I am such a one as yourself.

²² But I will reprove you, *

and set before you the things that you have done.

That’s the awful thing about being a poor creature. I assume that whatever I am thinking must be what God thinks. His affirmation of me must be what makes the world go around. But that isn’t true. God is his own Person with his own thoughts about things. Wonderfully, he doesn’t always hold his tongue. He speaks and makes himself known. And in revealing himself to me, he lifts the veil so that I am also able to see myself. All the hubris, the lying, the fauxthenticity, the selfishness, the independence burn away in the bright light of his Truth.

seven

Here’s a little palate cleanser. Read the Comments below the line!

Have a great weekend!