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Scott Bessent was asked in an interview this week why people don’t feel better about the economy and he replied: “They feel good in their hearts.” If a female Treasury Secretary answered like this she would be dragged all over the Internet for being an unserious idiot – it’s really the brandishing Bessent deserves but because he is a white, rich, male who attended an Ivy League School, he gets a pass. (I’m sorry to be rude but this guy is a clown.)

Then there’s Donald Trump. A lying, grifting, buffoon who people look the other way from because of position power. Just imagine if Kamala Harris or Barack Obama had committed a scintilla of his crimes – they would be in jail.

The double-standard that pervades our current reality is staggering. So what do we do about it? One idea is to bring shame back. These people deserve to be mocked back to the cave they crawled out of.

Katy Tur of MSNBC has started doing it rather effectively. More women need to get on board – let’s practice it at scale.

When Jamie Dimon recently advocated for the war in Iran, the moderator should have said: “People in America face unprecedented food insecurity and concern about rising energy prices, you’re really advocating for MOAR WAR, sir?”

There are at least a dozen stories here about a certain individual who is constantly protected and preserved by his overlords. Why? Institutional power protects its own thanks to self-preservation. Organizations are designed to manage risk, maintain stability, and safeguard reputation, which means containing problems rather than confronting them. When allegations arise, the focus is not on what happened, but on the potential legal, financial, and reputational impact of acknowledging it. Senior leaders are given the benefit of the doubt, while systems and processes are activated to control the narrative and limit exposure. This dynamic is reinforced by shared incentives — careers, capital, and credibility are interconnected, and challenging one part of the system can threaten the whole.

G. Michael Hopf’s 2013 book Those Who Remain wrote: “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times,” to illustrate the cyclical, generational pattern of human history.

We are clearly knee-deep in a cycle of weak-men and it’s time to laugh in the face of these hypocrites because they don’t deserve the oxygen we give them.

Until then, the beatings will continue until morale improves.