Sandra Borch has evidently had a terribly difficult time after she withdrew from top-level politics.

She acknowledged her wrongdoing and immediately resigned as Minister when the plagiarism in her master’s thesis became known, unlike Ingvild Kjerkol, who did not give in under any circumstances when she was exposed for the same. The conclusion was plagiarism also for Kjerkol, but in her case it did not result in self-reproach.

It has done so for Borch, who this Saturday comes forward with an alcohol problem in VG. The deepest fall comes when she is caught for drink-driving for the second time. She is now attempting to reconstruct an existence, and may she succeed in doing so.

There is one detail in the interview that makes a deep impression: at present, it is not possible for her to forgive herself, and she believes she may never be able to do so.

For my own part, I have no doubt that the Norwegians, most of whom have a good heart, will do so. For which of us has never done something foolish in private that we are not proud of? Judge not, that ye be not judged, said the man from Nazareth, and he was no fool.

Forgiveness can be a difficult exercise, whether it is oneself or others who are to be forgiven. The difficulty increases with the magnitude of the wrongdoing.

But what ought to be most relevant for the rest of us when a public figure has misconducted themselves in private is precisely that it concerns private matters.

In the past, we did not learn as much about the private lives of public figures as we do today. Whether that is an improvement or not shall remain unsaid, but both today’s and yesterday’s arrangements had their good and bad sides.

But why is it still the case that a politician’s drink-driving results in a public stigma, whereas destroying the country does not?

There are surely quite many of us who have infinitely greater sympathy with the individual Borch than with the politicians who bear the principal responsibility for Norwegians being in the process of losing their own country, and for it having for decades in any case been neglected, exploited, overridden, invaded and given away.

Thus Borch will undoubtedly be forgiven. The criminal political class that brought us here will not be. But it will scarcely present itself in VG in shame.

For to do such a thing, one would have to possess shame, but VG would also have to agree that it is a shame to destroy the country. Good heavens, how politically expedient it is that none of these conditions are fulfilled.