Donald Trump can get away with cheating on his wife with a porn star, talking about “grabbing pussy,” and continually misrepresenting facts and changing his mind, and lying about it, and that’s just for starters… and his ratings among his Republican supporters are increasing. On the other hand, a single, and comparatively mild instance of a forced kiss and grope by Democrat Senator Al Franken forced his resignation and the end of his political career. These are the most glaring examples, but there are many more than a few others.

For the most part, although there are exceptions, at this point in history, Democrats seem to be less forgiving of sexual and ethical lapses by Democratic politicians than Republicans are of Republican politicians.

Is there a double standard?

That’s the wrong question to ask. The more accurate question is why Republicans tolerate, even ignore, behavior that has current Democrats cringing and defenestrating their own politicians after such behavior when their own politicians engage in it and furious when Republicans ignore such behavior by Republican officials.

It’s not a double standard. We’re talking about two different standards.

The values of Trump’s Republican base are anchored firmly in the 1950s, if not earlier, where men expect to be the single bread-winner, where women are subservient to men, where the rest of the world bows to U.S. wishes, where minorities know their place, where every man should have any gun he wants to possess, and where the business of government is business, with minimal government regulation and where untrammeled economic growth trumps the environment and civil rights, with the single later value is that deficit spending should only be used to reduce taxes, subsidize business, and increase U.S. military power.

The majority of Democrats don’t see it quite that way. They tend to believe that women should have control of their own bodies and that women and minorities should be paid equally with white men, that protecting the environment requires greater regulation on business, that the second amendment does allow certain regulations on the use of firearms, that national parks and federal lands shouldn’t be wide open for low-cost mining and extraction, that taxes are a price paid for a civilized society and that the most affluent should pay more of them in return for their affluence.

As a result of these differences, Republicans tend to minimize male misbehavior as “men being men” and to believe that women, minorities, and the poor only have to act like men to improve themselves, even while failing to recognize all the existing barriers to doing that, or the fact that minorities who act that way are considered rude and uppity, and assertive women are bitches. Study after study shows that identical resumes, articles, and work are more highly praised when a “white male” name is attached, and downgraded when a feminine or minority name is attached.

But no amount of logic is going to change values… or an outdated standard of belief that’s also at variance with the rest of the industrialized world. And unlike the 1950s, this time what the rest of the world believes will make a difference… and that difference will be costly to the U.S. in more ways than one, beginning with the oncoming trade war.

A week ago, early in the morning, I mailed from the local Cedar City post office, not at an out of the way collection box, some routine paperwork to the accounting office at Macmillan, using first class mail. Yesterday, I got an email from the recipient saying that it had just arrived – six days from Cedar City to New York. It cost fifty cents. If I’d sent it by UPS next day it likely would have cost me close to forty dollars; two-day UPS would have been $26.

But historically, should a simple letter cost fifty cents? In 1958, sixty years ago, first class postage was three cents. If postage had increased only as much as the inflation rate, then first class mail should only cost twenty-six cents, roughly half what it does now.

We don’t get that much first class mail, and most of that consists of bills. What we do get is lots and lots of letters from non-profits asking for money, a number of periodicals to which we’ve subscribed, and over the course of a year, close to a ton of catalogues [and this is no exaggeration because weekly, I cart them to the local recycling bin], most of which comes from companies from which we’ve never ordered anything and never will.

From reading the Postal Service rate schedule and from researching direct mail costs, it appears that each of those one pound [or less] catalogues has a mailing cost of between eighty cents and a dollar fifty.

Theoretically, the Postal Services is supposed to allocate costs of providing services according to the base cost of each class of service under a “common charge” system. Except, in practice, it’s not done that way, and it hasn’t been done that way for at least forty years. How do I know? Because some forty-five years ago, I was a Congressional staffer working for a Congressman on the Appropriations Committee, and even back then the “common charges” were undertariffed and the postal rates for bulk mail, commercial mail [such as catalogues] were essentially based on the marginal costs… and Post Office officials testified that such pricing worked, and I could never get an answer that wasn’t trumped-up gobbledy-gook.

The same thing is happening today. The Postal Service recently entered into a contract with Amazon where the charges for delivering each package roughly average two dollars, half of what other large retailers pay. The lower charges to Amazon were based at least in part on the idea that serving Amazon costs less because Amazon’s shipping was so organized that the effort by the USPS was less.

The problem with this argument is that is doesn’t take into account the heavier load on the USPS infrastructure. It’s marginal cost pricing again, without enough revenue added to support the infrastructure. Charging Amazon on the basis of an accurate proportional common charge basis would add $1.50 on average to delivery changes, which would still be $.50 less per package than for other large retail shippers.

The same system also applies to catalogues. Now, the mail order retailers claim that any significant increase in their bulk advertising rate mail would be prohibitively expensive. I don’t buy it. It wasn’t true forty-five years ago, and it isn’t true now. When companies can afford to design, print, and send us literally tons of unread, unused catalogues year after year, with only minimal increases in their rates [in most years, it’s been 1-2 percent a year; this year was a “whopping” 5.9%], that claim rings rather hollow, but obviously the lobbying campaigns by retailers, manufacturers, and non-profit organizations outweigh any practicality.

Much as I think that there are worthwhile non-profits and charities out there, we’re also inundated by the tireless appeals of both the worthy and the not-so-worthy, sent at roughly a quarter of the cost of a first class letter, and most of those we’ve also never contributed to.

Is it any wonder that the Postal Service continues to lose money?

Generally, the use of logical reasoning is a good thing. Every once in a while, intuition bests logic. Likewise, consistency is usually better than inconsistency. And, of course, continuing leaps of intuition coupled with total inconsistency is a formula for disaster… unless, heaven forbid, you’re a criminal trying not to get caught.

So why do so many people have difficulty recognizing that President Trump’s lack of logic and consistent inconsistency can only lead to more and more trouble, both nationally and internationally? He’s had so many different policies and statements on immigration, trade and tariffs, and civil rights, among others, that I’ve long since lost track.

And while support for his tax cuts is still strong, that’s only because most people have yet to figure out the consequences. Much of the federal tax cut will result in higher state income taxes, and professionals, well-off but not wealthy, in high-tax states, will see their taxes increase. Most of those who actually get a tax cut will find it modest at best, except for the very rich, who will get significant tax relief. Of course, very few people are considering that between the Federal Reserve and the tax cut, interest rates will continue to rise, and that means the new homeowners and those with adjustable rate mortgages will likely see their tax cut vanish into mortgage payments, if that tax cut hasn’t already been swallowed by higher state taxes or lower itemized deductions.

None of this seems to matter to most people, especially to Trump supporters, at least, according to recent polls, since a narrow majority of Americans now like the economic situation, but then most people liked the economic situation in early 1929, or 2007.

Nor does it seem to matter that recent actions by EPA and the Interior Department will worsen air quality in areas already suffering highly polluted air, and that such pollution will cause more deaths from respiratory failure.

What matters to most people is that they think they have a little more money, that the President “sees” their problems, that he’s going to reduce illegal immigration, and he’s going to use tariffs to put in their place those foreign nations that have used unfair trade terms to steal our jobs.

Logic says some of this isn’t even accurate, and that none of this will work out in the long run, and possibly not even in the comparatively near future – but logic has nothing to do with politics, which just might be why our politics are so screwed up.

Significance? What is it? The leading dictionary definition is “importance” or “of meaning or consequence,” but the problem beyond that is how we as individuals, cultures, and societies define what is important, meaningful or consequential.

What is actually more important to the individual [and human society and culture] is the concept of insignificance, the realization that one may have no import, no meaning, and no consequence to others, to society, to the world or the universe. Study after study has shown that human beings are motivated far more by loss aversion than by hope of or desire for gain. We don’t like losing things, anything, especially a sense of self-worth.

That is why human beings will go to almost any lengths at times to avoid being insignificant or allowing themselves to consider that they are insignificant… and why individuals who believe themselves to be insignificant have a far higher rate of suicide and attempted suicide. It’s also likely why suicide rates are higher in societies with greater levels of income inequality, since people on the bottom not only perceive that their significance is less, but also see that their chances of increasing their significance are low.

Virtually every human society has a creation story or myth involving the creation of human beings by a greater power. Such myths convey a greater significance to the human race and to individuals, as does the concept of a personal god, than the actual possibility that we are merely a product of evolutionary development, and the sometimes violent reaction against the concept of evolution may well lie in the need for significance on both a personal and societal level.

In general, there are two ways to achieve comparatively greater personal significance, first by positive deeds, including accumulation of wealth, power, or knowledge or, second, by reducing the significance of others. Those who cannot achieve greater significance, or as much significance as they believe they deserve, in a positive way often attack anyone who they perceive is not granting them adequate respect – or significance.

Cultural signs of the fear of insignificance – and of the fear that others will attack one’s significance – are also everywhere. One current sign is the anger among certain minorities when someone disrespects, or “disses,” another. Authors get upset by bad reviews , especially those that minimize their work or talent. Negative tweets often generate violent reactions.

Politicians worried about their professional and personal significant take umbrage at negative news coverage, often attacking the media, or claiming that what is reported that is critical of them is “fake news” – especially when such reports are true, or largely so.

There’s an old saying about actions speaking louder than words, and it might not be a bad idea to consider how significant we – and those who lead us – might be by actions, or lack of action, rather than by all the words trumpeting greatness and impugning those who don’t agree.

Once upon a time, I was the staff director of a Congressman’s office. He was a Republican. At that time, the Democrats held an overwhelming majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. They also used that power in pushing through legislation to which the Republicans objected violently. Even when the Reagan Administration came to town, Republicans could do little to oppose the Democrats.

So the Republicans began to organize. They created initially small power bases, such as the Heritage Foundation and the Republican Study Committee. Over time, other organizations soon followed, as did intensive grass-roots organizing in conservative areas nation-wide. Eventually, the Republicans gained and held a majority in the House and Senate, and just as the Democrats had once done, they began to abuse their power and to push through legislation violently opposed by the Democrats or to block legislation they opposed, even when polls showed that the majority of Americans supported such legislation.

Obviously, this is a pattern in American politics, but what concerns me is how, with each swing of the pendulum, the infighting and the partisanship become nastier and more violent; the attacks more personal; and the intransigence more entrenched.

The last time that political intensity in Congress may have been this intense occurred on May 22, 1856, over the issue of slavery when Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina entered the Senate Chamber and physically attacked Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts from behind with a metal-topped cane. Sumner was so badly injured that it took him years to recover. Certainly, the verbal intensity at present is higher, cruder, and more distorted than it has been in some time, and, combined with the political polarization of the two major parties, it doesn’t appear that there’s any sign of moderation on the horizon.

I’m old enough to have seen the swing of politics from one abusive majority to another abusive majority of a different party, but most Americans either haven’t lived long enough to see it, don’t care so long as “their” party prevails, or have no idea what I’m talking about.

History would suggest that this kind of situation, unless defused, will only get worse. The only question may be whether we’re looking at a repeat of 1968 or 1861.