Corbin is professor emeritus of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.
Thankfully, the 2022 midterm election is now far behind us. I can hear many voters exuding a sigh of relief and shouting – after $17 billion was spent on disinformation, misinformation and the occasional truthful political ad – “Yes, finally, the election is over.”
Normal life – I think – is back and we’re now deep into the holiday season. Let’s ponder how the 2022 holiday season might become better than we’ve experienced heretofore.
First, let’s recognize the word “holiday” means Holy Day. Next, let’s value that holidays are celebrated from both a religious and cultural perspective. Then, we need to acknowledge the holy day is celebrated throughout the world.
If we can agree on these three premises, we just might develop a better appreciation of others and approach the 2022 holiday season from a more holistic and inclusive perspective.
For centuries the holidays celebrated include Bodhi Day (Buddhist), Christmas (Christian), Diwali (Hindu), Eid al-Fitr (Muslim), Hanukkah (Jewish), Kwanzaa (African-American), Lunar New Year (East Asia) and Winter Solstice (Indigenous), to name a few.
Mike Ronsisvalle, a Florida-based psychologist, claims in faith-based traditions the holidays were a time when people were to purposely change their behavior and thereby modify their holiday experience. For some, however, the holiday season will be static and self-centered, only thinking of and gifting to those within their own family.
How might we intentionally change our behavior this holiday season to its fullness?
Returning to Americans spending nearly $17 billion on political candidates, which amounts to $162.84 per voter, a challenge is offered. For every dollar you contributed to a candidate for public office, intentionally give that same amount to a not-for-profit charity, which may be in greater need of financial assistance than a politician’s perpetual reelection coffers.
Didn’t give to a politician or party? Then purposely contact your local food bank and ask if you could spend a few hours volunteering at their agency and/or contribute money ($1 helps provide 10 meals). Don’t forget most post-secondary institutions of higher learning also have food pantries to assist students in need.
Inquire if there are any residents at a long-term care facility or hospital who might like a fruit basket, personal care items, phone call or a 10-minute in-person visit. Your outreach endeavor may assist those who are lonely and isolated during a time that should be joyful.
There are about 600,000 homeless Americans; more than 33,000 are veterans. Impactful Ninja ranked the seven best charities for helping homeless people with the National Alliance to End Homelessness touted as setting the gold standard with a Charity Watch grade of A+.
If you are seeking to help make a positive impact upon kids in need, there are more than 117,000 children waiting to be adopted in America. Impactful Ninja also identified the 10 best charities to support foster care. The top three in terms of overall impact are Foster Care to Success, Together We Rise and Children’s Defense Fund.
My favorite global, nonprofit organization that provides medical services to those affected by war, disaster or disease is International Medical Corps.
Consider contacting your local Kiwanis, Rotary or Lions clubs – all non-sectarian – to seek membership. Their multitude of service projects would give you around-the-year opportunities to assist people and organizations in your community who need assistance.
While spending time with your family this holiday season is important, consider thinking outside the box and intentionally change your behavior by helping others. It may be the start of a new holiday tradition of pursuing the festive season in a more robust, long-term and meaningful perspective.
Happy Holy Days!
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.