It's Not What You Say, but What You Do

This is, after all, the same Tory party that has played rough in the past.  Elections Canada found that the party overspent its campaign limit in 2006, and wrongfully claimed rebates.  Former Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro, who now sits as an independent, is in court on charges of overspending and other offences in the 2008 election.  And in 2011 the Tories tried to mislead voters by phone in Liberal MP Irwin Cotler's riding.

Missing the one that irks me the most - the attempt to bribe a dying man using his family's well-being as collateral.

Let's not single the Harper Tories out here, though - there are a lot of folk whose actions don't meet their rhetoric.  All political parties have issues about their words and deeds not lining up, whether it be on the openness of their candidate selections or their integrity on spending rules.

There's the cops in Ferguson, too.  Oh, and North Korea.

It's not really that surprising - everyone has a general sense of what ethical standards are, but come on - when it's about winning, you gotta cut rules to get ahead, right?  Victor makes the rules, etc.  Like attack ads, people may not like what's needed to win, but so long as they can't see the sausage making progress, they're willing to look the other way.  

Right?

We hear this sort of justification from people caught with their fingers in the cookie jar, when we hear justification at all.  More common is to point the finger at someone else, or ignore the problem and hope it goes away.

This sort of behaviour is always, always accompanied by attempts to reduce transparency so as to reduce the odds of getting caught again.  This is why the cops in Ferguson have been targetting media with fly-zone restrictions and tear gas.  It's why North Korea is a hermit state.  It's also why so much of what happens in our House of Commons is going in camera, watchdogs are being silenced and partisan operations are leaving fewer paper trails.

When you're not being watched, though, it becomes even easier to cut corners and behave badly.  It's an old story - dop the candles so you can do what you feel you need to do in the shadows.

Problem is, you simple can't stop the signal any longer.  Social media makes everyone a journalist and, increasingly, means there's no tribal wall tall enough for individual partisans to hide behind.  

Spend all the money on slick ads promoting your branded ethics you want; attempt to bully or silence your people and your critics.  The truth is that it's getting harder and harder to be hypocritical in our increasingly socialized world.

The best way to show the world your ethics, then, is to actually live them.

Just imagine how things would change if everyone were open to practicing what they preach.  We're already seeing what happens when they don't.