It is very common, when politicians announce things they've done, are doing or are planning to do in the future, to hear them talk about the fact that these decisions have been very difficult for them. This takes place on both a local and a national level, and has become so frequent that a politician's general effectiveness tends to be measured against how difficult their job is seen to be. We often hear of Prime Ministerial candidates, 'Are they prepared to make the tough decisions?' But what exactly is a difficult decision, what about it makes it difficult and how does that square with decisions that are morally right?
In 2018, following two failed attempts, I decided to go vegan. I'd been vegetarian for just under ten years at that point, and for a long time I thought being vegetarian was enough; but once I learned how much animal cruelty is involved in the production of eggs and dairy products, I came to the conclusion that I could not morally support it. I'm very happy being vegan and I expect I will be for the rest of my life, but it wouldn't be true to say that becoming vegan hasn't at times been a source of some inconvenience for me - having to read the ingredients on every product I pick up at the supermarket, asking questions in restaurants about the food, and trying to think what I could cook that non-vegan friends might like. Becoming vegan was a difficult decision.
Last summer, the new cast members for the West End production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child were announced, and when I was looking through them I was taken aback to discover that the part of Albus would be played by a good friend of mine. My immediate reaction was to congratulate him on getting such a high-profile West End role and assure him that I'd come to see it - but in truth, I haven't done, and I very much doubt I will in the remaining time that he's playing it. The reason for this is that the creator of the Harry Potter franchise, JK Rowling, has and continues to behave in a way that is extremely harmful to transgender people, in her increasingly hostile tweets, her refusal to listen to any dissenting opinion and, perhaps worst of all, her smug reiterations that she'll continue to donate her vast fortune to hate mongering transphobic groups. As much as I want to support my friend on a personal level, I feel that as someone who's campaigned for trans rights I cannot support this production. That was another difficult decision.
These decisions were both difficult and morally right. Let's look at what constitutes a difficult decision and a morally right one. A morally right decision is, very simply, a decision that helps someone, as opposed to a morally wrong decision which hurts someone. It can be a bit less black-and-white than that, as there are lots of decisions that help one person and hurt someone else, and at those times you have to work out whose need is greater and if there's any kind of compromise that can be made, but that's the basic formula.
A difficult decision is one that causes you some kind of inconvenience as an inevitable part of enacting it, as opposed to an easy one which causes you no inconvenience (or perhaps even alleviates some of the inconvenience you were already facing before that point). This inconvenience can be practical (as in, the time and energy it takes me to check that I'm morally okay with the food I'm eating) or emotional (as in, the disappointment I feel at not being able to support my friend who's received his big break). And if a difficult decision causes you this much inconvenience, the only real reason for making it is because it's the morally right one, the one that you'll be able to feel pride in taking rather than guilt. This is why difficult decisions and morally right ones very often go hand-in-hand.
But when politicians talk about making difficult decisions, I don't think they usually mean these kinds of things. Nick Clegg said that axing child benefit was a difficult decision. I've heard firsthand the various members of Monmouthshire County Council scramble to talk about what a difficult decision it was to close Tudor Street Day Centre, a resource which countless members of Monmouthshire's disabled community and their families relied on. Today, I saw Labour MP Darren Jones justifying Labour's colossal drop in members (they've lost a staggering 23,000 people in just the last two months) by saying it's because Labour are making 'difficult decisions' to prepare to govern. Jones doesn't elaborate in the article exactly which difficult decisions he's referring to, but he's obviously meaning things that are deeply unpopular with ordinary people if it's causing so many to leave the party.
I don't think that any of those decisions were difficult, because I don't see that they have caused the slightest iota of inconvenience to the people making them. Let me be clear on some political decisions which have fitted that category. It was difficult for Jeremy Corbyn to consistently promote socialist policies, knowing that the media and the establishment right would absolutely crucify him for it, causing irrevocable damage to his reputation and his career. I have a friend who dug under a road to a fossil fuel terminal to stop oil tankers - this was a difficult decision, both because it's extremely dangerous and because the legal consequences are severe (that friend is being sentenced next month, and expecting a custodial sentence). It was a difficult decision for Jacob Flickinger to leave his wife and baby son and go with his colleagues at World Central Kitchen to deliver food and aid to Palestinians, knowing that Israel was quite likely to attack them (tragically, they were all killed). It was a difficult decision for former US serviceman Aaron Bushnell to fatally set himself on fire as a statement about what Israel is doing to Palestine. All of these things caused a lot of inconvenience to the people who did them, and in some cases cost them their lives.
It is not a difficult decision for a politician to do the thing that they're under pressure to do from the capitalist establishment. That is, at best, just allowing themselves to be bullied and intimidated, and at worst a cynical action from someone who never went into politics to help anyone anyway. The only reason that these people say they were difficult decisions is because they know it will be unpopular, and they want to give the impression of having spent a lot of time thinking about it and weighed up all the pros and cons - essentially, to have behaved in a way that is considered rather than impulsive. I have no idea how long they spend thinking about these things before they decide to do them, and I don't especially care, but let's not pretend that a decision that causes great inconvenience to someone else and very little to you is in any way difficult. The person it's difficult for is the person who is on the receiving end of the consequences, who usually played no part in the decision.
Just as a final point, I'll add that life is all about decisions, and no one can be expected to make the right decision all the time. It's unreasonable to expect them to, and it's unreasonable to expect someone to never just resort to doing the thing that's easy. I don't think someone is evil if they eat meat, or if they buy Harry Potter stuff - it's very hard to stand up to things that are so in your face and require so much energy not to do, and I'm sure many of them are doing some hard and morally right things that I myself am not, so I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. And yes, this does include politicians - there are politicians that have bowed to pressure and voted in ways that have disappointed me that I still generally think are not too bad. But if you are doing that, and you're doing what you deep down know is the wrong thing, please do not insult me by making out that that decision caused you any difficulty. On the contrary - it's the easiest thing you can possibly do, and that's why there's so much cruelty and unfairness in the world.
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