So Bill Clinton comes clean - he had sex with Monica just because he could. I find myself cheered by that explanation, because it’s the simplest, most uncluttered truth of all, when it comes to sex. Even though he goes on to describe it as connected to his inner “demons” resulting from his patently miserable childhood, he doesn’t seek to excuse his behaviour, or to blame it on his parents. There’s none of the 12-step “hello I’m Bill and I’m a sex addict” pious self-abasement, with its insidious claims to redemptive moral superiority; no self-deluding “she made me do it, I couldn’t help myself” blame-shifting on to Woman the Temptress; none of the “my wife didn’t understand that a man has needs” crap. Clinton fell on his sword. He took responsibility, he says, he was prepared to do the “family work” and build bridges, to repair the damage caused to his relationships. For, when all is said and done, the only explicit bond of trust he broke was his marriage vow. To lie about the sex afterwards to the media was of course regrettable, but who could have foreseen the obsessive deviousness of Linda Tripp, or the extraordinary hatred of Kenneth Starr?
Clinton describes “because I could” as “the most morally indefensible reason one could have for doing anything”. On one level, I agree. One only has to look at the actions of his successor to see how that principle operates at a very sinister level - the US ignores UN resolutions because it can, it extends its empire and invades other countries because it can, it tears up the Geneva Convention because it can, it instigates a policy of torturing prisoners, and hides them from the Red Cross, because it can. It rips open Alaska for oil because it can. It ignores the Kyoto Protocol because it can. And so on, so relentlessly, so depressingly ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
That’s moral indefensibility on such a globally corrupt scale that adequate redress seems hard to imagine. I only wish that faced with such a lack of fidelity, the rest of the world was as insistent on back-to-basics relationship-building arbitration as Hillary was to her husband. I wish the rest of the world had the spine to send the US to “the doghouse”, that it had the fury of a woman scorned. But it seems to me that everyone is allowing themselves to be shafted, repeatedly and thoroughly, by the US, because it feels good. But that sort of pleasure doesn’t last, and comes with a price - an ever-increasing appetite for more.
But Clinton’s breast-beating on his moral indefensibility only really makes sense in America. American puritanism with regards to matters sexual is quite extraordinary, and is of a quality that is unrecognisable in Europe - even in Holy Ireland. Indeed, perhaps only in the eyes of the American nemesis, their former allies the Taliban, do you get a flavour of it, as is always the case when there is an extreme psychological polarity - the two need each other to maintain their identities, they feed off each other’s hatreds.
It takes a puritanical nation to conceive of sexual humiliation as the appropriate - and official - torture method to appal and terrorise a puritanical enemy. Only young American soldiers could take part in such gruesome rituals and be so totally unaware of the morality of it that they take pictures for kicks - so unconscious are they of their own shadow, so unprepared are they to make complex moral choices as individuals. The morality of the army is simple - we’re the good guys, and the enemies aren’t human, they are evil terrorist plane-flying scum. It’s the same in all armies. But I can’t believe soldiers from any other nation would treat cowering prisoners as if they were in a video game or theme park. Or a zoo.
When I was in New York recently, it happened to be Fleet Week, (a la Sex And The City). The Navy boys are in, and sailors from all over the States parade around in their white bell-bottomed finery down Broadway and Fifth Avenue peering up at the strips of sky in awe. And as I admired their youthful athleticism and listened to their rolling accents, on their best behaviour, I marvelled at their clean-cut natures, so alien were they to me. They were utterly naive, unselfconscious of their beauty, their energy, their strength. It’s almost that America its damnedest to keep their youth innocent. Witness the extraordinary brouhaha that erupted when Janet Jackson bared her breast in the middle of a family sports event - the fury, the hate, the fear.
But such ferocious determination to protect and maintain ignorance masks a deep anxiety about morality and sex, a refusal to accept the complexity of life, its confusion and light and shadow. And that, in my book, is the most morally indefensible act of all.