Remember how, after blue America elected the first African-American president in 2008, conservatives reflected on their devastating loss and decided that they were at fault for cutting themselves off from the suffering of the urban majority during the out-of-touch Cheney/Bush era?
Remember how Fox News excoriated conservatives who had shut themselves up in their rural enclaves, ignoring the suffering of their fellow blue-state citizens just because they disagreed with them politically?
Remember how conservatives came in droves, knocking on our blue-state doors, asking if they could join us for coffee to build bridges through conversation and shared concern for the future of the nation?
Remember how all those soul-searching heartlanders touched us so deeply with their sincere humility and their intense desire to learn what we really felt and how they could have been so wrong about us?
Me neither. Because it never happened.
What did happen?
Republican leaders met secretly to pledge themselves to oppose the newly elected president—even when he proposed enacting their own policies.
Groups of old white people hit the streets in the tens to moan about taxes and government overreach and Kenyan-socialist-communist-new-world-order-leftist-Saul-Alinsky-liberal-media conspiracy theories. Fox News sent crews to cover breathlessly these pathetic whine-fests, and to promote them as evidence of the coming revolution. Fox then started hosting its own events, sending their flagship troglodytes out to drive up turnout—and boom!—the “grassroots” Tea Party movement appeared. (Go back and watch the videos chronologically: the narrative of a “homegrown” Tea Party movement is a fiction, like so much else about “conservatism.”)
Abominable “Christians” in Congress started attacking the new president and his supporters in ways too horrid to be repeated here.
Why go on? We know the story: Republicans behave badly, and it’s always the Democrats’ fault.
If only we wouldn’t pick on them. If only we wouldn’t call them names. If only we wouldn’t bully them into having to let minorities go to the same schools as their kids, or bake cakes for LGBTQ people, or operate polling places where minorities can vote conveniently, or give other people access to safe abortions, or pay any taxes in return for the benefits they receive disproportionately in relation to blue states, or purchase health care insurance in order to subsidize their fellow citizens who can’t afford it. If only we’d be nicer to them and leave them alone, then there wouldn’t be this terrible division in the country.
This is BS.
Now I have no idea if this is true, but the common wisdom in the press now is that Trump won the election with the help of long-suffering working-class people in the rust-belt states. The pundits are basing all of their criticism of the Democrats on this thesis. Even if this particular version of the story turns out to false, it is clear that Democrats lost some of the Obama vote, especially in the rust belt. There seems to be mounting evidence that Democrats sitting out the election also were responsible for the electoral college reversal of the popular vote. No doubt it will turn out to be some combination of the two. Democrats who didn’t vote bear a moral burden that is different from that of everyone who actually voted for Trump. Perhaps I will write about that in a future post. But the remainder of this post is directed at Trump voters, who are directly responsible for the mess we are now in. In any case, the pundits are dumping on liberals for their lack of empathy for the alienated Trump voter.
So do liberals need to do some soul-searching? Of course. That’s what decent people do when they fail at anything. They look inward to see if they unwittingly contributed to the failure, and if so, they try to reform their thinking and their behavior so they don’t do that again.
But we shouldn’t go overboard. We need to be humble and repentant to the extent of our responsibility. But we don’t need to assume that our faults are the whole problem, or that we bear more responsibility for our role in the failure than others do for theirs.
The liberal media intelligentsia is falling all over itself to castigate liberals for their callousness toward disenfranchised heartlanders. A summary of the self-flagellation would sound something like this: “Democrats didn’t spend any time in the blue-wall states. They took the heartlanders for granted, arrogantly assuming that the people on the short end of the globalization stick would follow them without question. We liberals all need to be ashamed at our lack of compassion. Why don’t we all just curl up into a big ball of self-loathing and endure the punishment we so richly deserve at the hands of Republicans, who are about to beat us mercilessly?”
Get a grip, folks. If we liberals have been callous and unsympathetic about the suffering of the heartlanders, we ought to feel guilty, we ought to repent, and we ought to promise solemnly to do much, much better in the future. But the responsibility for the election of Donald Trump was not caused by liberal callousness alone. It’s not all about us. There are others who have acted far more shamefully in bringing about Trump’s victory.
Precisely how guilty should we be for ignoring the suffering heartlanders? Think back before last Tuesday. Were we really ignoring the middle class during this election campaign? Did liberals never mention their plight? Did we never rail against fetid Republican “policies” that always bring misery to the 99%, and leave economic crashes in their wake? Did we say nothing about income inequality, about the disappearance of the American Dream, especially in the old rust-belt states? Did our candidates not promote policies that would improve the future of the disenfranchised heartlanders? Of course we did. And we have been doing it forever. It’s a distortion of reality to believe that Liberals completely ignored the middle class.
“But we didn’t reach out to them, listen to them, understand their pain.” Even if that is true, we are not more responsible for the disconnect than the heartlanders themselves, who, as I pointed out at the beginning, never reached out to us, never listened to us, never tried to understand our pain. Both sides are equally guilty for this aspect of the Great American Divide. Both sides bear responsibility for their lack of empathy toward the other.
But lack of empathy is one thing. Active hatred and hostility is another. The self-castigating liberal pundit class seems to believe that the suffering and anger of the heartlanders not only explains their support of Trump, but also excuses it. “Of course,” they seem to think, “those who are despondent and angry will lash out. They will try to take revenge. Once we understand the depth of their pain, it is heartless of us to blame them for a natural expression of rage.”
But is lashing out in anger really morally excusable? Perhaps—for a four-year-old. But we expect that people learn to restrain their impulses sometime before age eighteen. We expect them to learn that taking out anger on others in word or deed is reprehensible. We expect them to learn how to count to ten and wait for rage to pass. We expect them to learn that thirsting for revenge—let alone taking it—is morally depraved. In, short, we expect them to become decent human beings.
Americans were faced with a stark moral choice last week. Everyone who voted for Trump failed that test—miserably.
The test was simple. There was only one question on it. The question was not ambiguous in any way. There were only two answers: the right one and the wrong one—no gray areas, no pesky subjectivity, no room for mistaken judgments.
The question was this: Do you support Donald Trump or not?
This was a moral question, and not just a political one, because Trump expressed reprehensible sentiments repeatedly during his campaign, so that the choice of whether to support him was also a declaration of moral character. A vote for Trump was an admission of one’s own moral turpitude: a decent person does not stand in solidarity with reprehensible remarks or those who express them.
Here are just a few of Trump’s inexcusable public exhibitions:
- “So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Okay? Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay the legal fees." (At a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, February 1, 2016.) Also, “I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks." Also, “I’d like to punch him in the face.” (At a rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, February 23, 2016.)
- About John McCain: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.” (At the Family Leadership Summit, Ames, Iowa, July 17, 2015.)
- “Mr. Trump said U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel had ‘an absolute conflict’ in presiding over the litigation given that he was ‘of Mexican heritage’ and a member of a Latino lawyers’ association. Mr. Trump said the background of the judge, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, was relevant because of his campaign stance against illegal immigration and his pledge to seal the southern U.S. border. ‘I’m building a wall. It’s an inherent conflict of interest,’ Mr. Trump said.” (Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2016.)
- “Grab them by the pussy.” (Unbroadcast archive audio from Access Hollywood in 2005.)
- “Just so you understand. I don’t know anything about David Duke, OK? I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know — did he endorse me or what’s going on? Because I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists. And so you’re asking me a question that I’m supposed to be talking about people that I know nothing about.” (On CNN’s State of the Union, February 28, 2016.)
Here we have Trump on record: 1. Suggesting that supporters do violence to protesters and publicly trumpeting his desire to do the same; 2. disparaging the courageous sacrifice of a genuine war hero; 3. attacking the impartiality of a federal judge because of his racial heritage; 4. approvingly describing an act of aggression against women; 5. refusing to denounce David Duke and the KKK while pretending to know nothing about them.
This is not about politics, about policies that can be debated or political proclivities that can be opposed. All of these remarks are morally reprehensible. They make the skin of decent people crawl, regardless of political persuasion. The attempts of party hacks and Trump apologists to spin their way out of them struck even most Republicans as arrant falsehoods.
The response of any decent person to any of these outrages would be—at the very least—to immediately cut off all association with the person who made them.
This was not the response of Trump supporters. Those who cheered Trump on, or imitated his shameful conduct, or laughed delightedly at his outrageousness, or voiced some discomfort with his manner while continuing to back him, or even, like Paul Ryan, denounced him while continuing to support him—they failed the moral test, and declared their depravity together with their vote.
But more than that. By voting as they did, they did positive wrong: they betrayed their fellow citizens into the hands of a reprehensible human being. And if they thought they could escape culpability by telling themselves that he didn’t mean all the reprehensible things he said, they need to know that this makes them not less culpable, but even more—because they were willing to help foist upon their fellow citizens someone whom they themselves judged to be a liar.
None of this can be said of those who voted against Trump, whatever their political affiliation. We allied ourselves with people whom we, rightly or wrongly, regarded as decent but flawed. We refused to make common cause with someone who is either utterly reprehensible, or did a remarkable imitation of an utterly reprehensible person. (But then again, if it was an imitation, he’s reprehensible for doing it.) We can hold our heads up, whatever our other failings, knowing that we did not align ourselves with immorality, or delight in its outlandishness, or excuse away its vileness, or betray our country to a moral abomination.
Does this sound harsh? Am I being unjust to the heartlanders? Do I condemn arrogantly and high-handedly? As a liberal, I seek to know if I am guilty of these sins.
A recent article by a prominent religious leader urges liberals to refrain from shaming the heartlanders. He advises Democrats on the correct way to approach Trump supporters:
We need to reach out to Trump voters in a spirit of empathy and contrition. Only then can we help working people understand that they do not live in a meritocracy, that their intuition that the system is rigged is correct (but it is not by those whom they had been taught to blame) and that their pain and rage is legitimate.
The Rabbi’s instincts are good, but his conclusion is wrong. It is marred by the very same liberal condescension that he is counseling against. Do you hear it? “We have to help these people understand.” “They have correct intuitions but are blinded by indoctrination.” “Someone else needs to assure them that their pain and rage is legitimate.”
This is the patronizing that heartlanders detest—and rightly so. They don’t want or need us to think for them or enlighten them or comfort them like children. They are not children who cannot control their outbursts. They do not suffer from any condition that diminishes their mental capacities. They are not incapable of reasoning to conclusions and governing themselves accordingly. To assume otherwise is to treat them as lesser beings, needing the assistance and guidance of others.
If we are to deal with them as equals, we must assume that they are no less autonomous than ourselves. We must impute to them the same freedom of thought and choice that we imagine ourselves to use when coming to our own conclusions. Otherwise, we take them for something less than ourselves, something less than a fully self-governing human being.
So we must assume that, in choosing to do what they did, those suffering from decades of neglect were fully cognizant of their own anger and pain; that they didn’t need the support of any third party to legitimize their feelings; that they were perfectly capable of determining to their own satisfaction who, if anyone, deserved punishment; and that they made a deliberate decision whether they would restrain themselves or lash out against those they blame for their suffering.
And if we are to deal with them as equals, we own them more than supercilious effusions of fellow feeling. We owe them our direct and honest assessment of their decision, as the expression of one autonomous human being to another, on the level, and without sentimentality. And, because they are self-governing, without the excuses that extenuate the behavior of children or the mentally handicapped.
Now of course empathy and contrition are essential to our humanity. Of course we should strive to Increase our capacity for empathy. Without empathy, we cannot understand how others are feeling or sympathize with them, which is the basis of all morality and ethics. Of course we should strive to be properly contrite in recognizing and remedying our faults. Without contrition, we cannot reform our character or become better, more virtuous persons.
(Let me point out, though—perhaps annoyingly—that there are some people in the world who regard empathy as weakness, and consider contrition to be unnecessary, because they possess absolute truth. Let me also point out—even more annoyingly—that many of those people detest liberals and liberalism with white-hot hatred, precisely for preaching the doctrine of empathy and contrition.)
But empathy and contrition lose their moral force when we over-emphasize them while simultaneously under-emphasizing the necessity of making definite moral judgments and acting on them. If we allow empathy and contrition to prevent us from judging immoral acts accurately or taking action to stop unempathetic and uncontrite people from harming others, we vitiate our virtues through self-deception and cowardice.
So this, I think, is the direct and honest assessment that liberals owe to Trump voters.
As far as judgment goes:
The accurate judgment of those of who voted for Trump is that their choice was dishonorable.
That portion of Trump voters who actually condone his reprehensible sentiments are morally degenerate—there is no other apposite appraisal of the character of people who actually cheer for sentiments that drip of racism, misogyny, violence, and various other forms of hatred. These people are the age-old enemies of society and the decency it represents. Liberals have been fighting them since time immemorial for the sake of a future that may someday be free of their pestilential selfishness and their infectious dread. We expected nothing better than dishonorable behavior from them.
Are even these reprobates redeemable? Of course—but not until they develop enough empathy to activate their desire for contrition. Until then, we must hold our judgment of them while praying for their reformation.
That portion of Trump voters, on the other hand, who did not actually resonate with his expressed sentiments but who derived titillation from them, or excused them, or imagined them away, or even condemned them while continuing their support in order to “send a message” or exact revenge for their suffering—they have chosen poorly and acted badly. It would have been perfectly possible for them—though a difficult act of selfless courage which some of their fellow citizens nevertheless undoubtedly were able to accomplish—to suffer without lashing out; to resist aligning themselves with immorality; to refuse to betray their fellow citizens and future generations into the power of a reprehensible man. That would have been a courageous choice.
Even if Trump were suddenly to become an angel, repudiate all the despicable characters who flutter about him, and adopt policies that solve all of America’s problems, these heedless Trump voters can never erase the indignity that at the time they gave him their support they should have refused. They could have stood up. But they chose petulance or revenge instead, in order to make liberals aware that we perhaps lacked appropriate empathy for their suffering. In doing so, they gave in to vices worse than deficient empathy, and delivered the most powerful political office in the world to a nearly shameless moral ignoramus. Now liberals and right-thinking people of all political persuasions will be forced to expend the energy they might have devoted to introspection and contrition on waging battle to protect the most vulnerable among us—including the heartlanders who sent us their message—from the inevitable injustices that will flow from having a moral infant within reach of the most sensitive instruments of power in the world.
Can these Trump voters be redeemed as well? Of course. And if they show some of the same contrition that is being demanded of liberals, forgiven as well. But in the meantime, we must hold our judgment of them, and pray that they will see the enormity of their error, and eventually join us in protecting themselves and their fellow citizens from the damage they have helped to bring about.
If we do not stand firm in this judgment until the now-perilous conditions around us abate enough to make forgiveness less foolish, we risk the danger of allowing our empathy and contrition to lull us into a sense of complacency. Facing the existential threat of a moral infant in the White House, we cannot afford to ally with those who have demonstrated a disposition toward extremely bad judgment at a time of crisis, as well as a tendency to prefer the emotional satisfaction of lashing out to the general welfare of the nation.
This is not in keeping with the highest teachings of religious morality, which counsel us to forgive immediately and unconditionally, before forgiveness is even requested. I know it is a fault that I cannot rise to this level of consciousness. But I have observed that politics is singularly lacking in religious morality, especially among the politicians who trumpet their religion most loudly. Unless we take up the fight on the lower plane, there will soon be no decent people left to take it up on the higher.
In regard to action:
The dishonorable choice of Trump voters has elevated a moral infant to the most powerful political office in the world. Since that creature has nothing but unformed moral instincts, many of them apparently vicious, he will be at sea in the maelstrom of moral crises that assail his office, and will be putty in the hands of those who flatter and cajole in order to attain their own hidden ends. Trump voters have put their fellow citizens in great peril.
We liberals, therefore, have no choice but defend both the Trump voters and those they have put at risk from the depredations of the immoral forces that have been empowered to run rampant through society.
Here are some of the resolutions we liberals make to ourselves, as we try to stop those the Trump voters have empowered from wreaking irreparable harm and injustice:
This above all: We must never let self-doubt prevent us from taking action against what we absolutely know to be wrong.
We know without doubt that racism and bigotry are absolutely wrong. However much we worry about our complicity in the system of oppression, we must always stop those whose beliefs and actions increase racism and bigotry.
We know without doubt that extreme income inequality is absolutely wrong. However much we worry about our complicity in the unfairness of the economic system, we must always stop those whose beliefs and actions increase financial inequality without limit.
We know without doubt that demeaning, devaluing, and marginalizing women is absolutely wrong. However much we worry about our complicity in the subjugation of women, we must always stop those whose beliefs and actions increase gender inequity.
These, and other moral stances just as certain, are not debatable injustices. Everyone knows them to be wrong except the most hardened moral degenerates, whose admiring support for such wickedness makes even garden-variety moral degenerates recoil.
Liberals must never cease battling such injustices. They must constantly be on the lookout for new attempts to commit such injustices. And they must always act in such a way to extinguish, or block, or confound, or at least minimize the damage done by such injustices against their fellow citizens.
*******
So yes, thank you, heartlanders, for teaching us liberals how to be—and how not to be—humble. For showing us how to accurately assess our degree of culpability for the cataclysm you have unleashed. For demonstrating to us that even our most egregious faults amount to less than fig in comparison with the virtues that animate us. And for reconfirming in us the deathless determination to plant, despite all intransigence and retrogression, the foundations of a new earth, in which better human beings live better lives in better societies, freed—in as much as is humanly possible—from the ancient scourges of fear and reptilian animosity.