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In the fallout following the Harvey Weinstein disclosures, one thing has become clear–the tendency among certain male members of our species to exploit positions of power over women for sexual gratification crosses all lines, socially and politically. There is no moral high ground here, regardless of one’s political persuasion, because the root of the problem lies way beneath such demarcations. The problem’s origins are grounded in societal norms that have allowed men to behave badly for generations.

The same societal norms that have allowed the victimization of women are also at the root of commonly accepted business practices that make it fair game to lie about matters of economic consequence in order to exploit the less advantaged, the less educated and the less represented among us.

At a basic level, both these phenomena share a common thread–that it has somehow become acceptable for people to engage in enterprises that they know in their gut–or surely ought to know– to be wrong, be it a man trying to force himself on women in opposition to their wishes, as Charlie Rose has admitted doing, or, in claims put forth by Paul Ryan and his fellow Republicans that the spike in the deficit their tax overhaul legislation will cause will be largely mitigated by the increased growth that lower taxes for the rich will stimulate, while completely disregarding the  lack of any credible evidence in support of their position as well as an excess of evidence disproving it.

The engine driving this cognitive dissonance is fueled by selfishness and stoked by denial, hypocrisy and deception; in addition to the subjugation of women, its products include gerrymanding, voter-suppression laws,  secret offshore bank accounts and a host of similar phenomena. So-called Christian morality is silenced in the service of ‘political expediency,’ as perfectly exemplified by the continued support enjoyed by the likes of Roy Moore and donald trump.

The president himself should be made a poster boy for extremely bad behavior since his actions serve to perfectly illustrate what happens when a person places self-interest above all other considerations–short-term gain followed by a rising crescendo of collateral damage whose effects will bedevil the rest of us for generations.

The only real remedy for all this lies in the ballot box. The question we should all be asking ourselves is why so many of us continue to judge people by what they say rather than by their actions?