For a certainty, we are influenced by those that are the people that we look up to and admire, and so to the degree that these people are flawed, this thus can present a problem for us to overcome in our personality, for when we know that somebody that we value, does indeed suffer from having feet of clay, we are left with the choice of still maintaining our integrity, or making that fateful decision that what is good for the gander is good for the goose, as well.
It is indeed a dark and discouraging day when we discover that our parents whom we look up to and admire, are themselves, subject to various weaknesses and flaws. When we thus learn this, it affects us in the sense that we no longer are capable of admiring them as absolute paragons of virtue, but rather we see them as fallible human beings, quite capable of error and mistakes. While none of us are perfect, it is vital that those in positions of influence such as eminent politicians, teachers, and parents, present themselves to others as people of integrity, of which, they will at a minimum always own up to mistakes so made, and will also endeavor to do their best to correct that which needs to be corrected, in a timely fashion, rather than being people that are two-faced, or suffering from various other faults, such as selfishness, greed, and deceit, which they refuse to ameliorate.
It has to be said, that whenever we are interacting with other people of which we know for a certainty that the other person, suffers from the occasional flaw of, for instance, being vindictive, jealous-hearted, or petty, that we have to take what we so have observed into consideration, when we voluntarily provide our consent to that person to be, on some level, our companion, or our mentor. This thus signifies that those who are above us in the sense of being our boss, or our political representative, in which they have clearly demonstrated to us a lack of honesty and integrity, then our most appropriate response to that, has got to be the recognition that a person who lacks self-control and the apparent unwillingness to correct such, is probably the type of person that we should not only be wary of but also should be someone that we not give our full support to, for they deserve it not.
Indeed, the mistake that societies tend to make is to not make good on their salient observations of those that are in positions of power and influence, in which, those that have such power, should be held accountable on not only a professional level but also on a personal level. Indeed, a person who cannot keep their own house in order, seems unlikely to be the right person to keep society’s house in order, for those that cannot govern a little domain well and fairly, probably aren’t going to be the best choice to govern something of larger societal importance, either.