While growing up and finding yourself in a quandary, one heard "well you are doing the right thing" or "virtue is its own reward". Usually these times happened (and you were so advised) when you had a decision to make and one of the options was hugely less attractive but, at the root of it, the right one.
Seems our fearless leaders are in that rabbit hole right now. We, the people, are the virtuous choice. We are the blind date the mother set up with the big man on campus or the nerd with the homecoming queen because the mothers were friends. We are the ones for which someone else has to act virtuously. That doesn't seem to be in the cards.
There is a fairly constant parade of folks who get their soundbites full up with "it is a matter of principle" or "I can't break my word to the American People". What they are really saying is "on principle, I don't date nerds" or "I promised myself I would never date a homely girl". These aren't noble, virtue filled promises but rather selfish boorish ones. They would have been better off promising to behave like a human being rather than an oaf. We would have gotten that.
What if they had just promised us that no matter what they would put party over principle and expediency over virtue. We wouldn't be buying a pig in a poke.
Well, we bought it and now we own it. In the next couple weeks we are going to look inside that poke and see what it is we now own. The scoundrels who sold us this bill of goods may not still be running the store.