As has been said, "Character is what you do when no one is watching...or how you treat people on an anonymous forum."
I've had people right here on FR tell me that statement was irrelevant right after they had insulted people for no reason.
Shallowness and weakness of character are common all across the political spectrum.
Right.
St. John of the Cross said that it’s easier for a man to go into battle than to grow spiritually because spiritual growth requires the person to see himself as he truly is.
I knew a man who, instead of admitting his own faults and flaws, began to lie about his mistakes and wrongdoings, thinking that his lies made him look better than he was.
He was never wrong and he could prove that the fault in any situation belonged to Somebody Else by being so much louder and aggressively angry than any person who dared suggest an imperfection in his actions or his character that, finally, nobody challenged him and even his most tolerant and oldest friends stayed away.
As his life went by he found himself more and more isolated within his false and fragile house which he had built almost entirely with lies.
He ended up dying in his late eighties, alcoholic and diagnosed psychotic.
Ironically, by that time his lies were known as lies and his own actions had destroyed the good reputation he tried so hard to fabricate.