Trump Continues to Enable Cruelty and Abuse

Twenty-five years ago (when I was still a Republican), Republicans and conservative Christians would harp that character in an elected official mattered and was a defining reason whether or not to support a candidate or officeholder.  Fast forward to today, and Trumpists - who have more or less replaced the Republican Party in all but name - evangelical Christians have made it most clear that to them, no matter how abhorrent Donald Trump's conduct or his immortality,  they will stand by Trump (in my view, because he panders to their racist bigotry). Seemingly, no amount of bigotry, misogyny, and calls for acts of cruelty causes these individuals to reach a point of saying "enough is enough" and support decency.  In contrast, Democrats, progressives, and individuals like me - an "out" gay, former Catholic and non-church attending member of the ELCA -  believe that character in public officials DOES indeed matter.  A column in the Washington Post makes the case for character and morality in our public officials, including the occupant of the White House.  Here are excerpts:

America suffers from a persistent misunderstanding of the role of character in public life. For some — a diminishing few — political leaders should be moral exemplars. They should be men and women whom children can look up to and emulate. 

Democrats surrendered this standard in their defense of President Bill Clinton. Republicans are abandoning this standard in their defense of President Trump. There is apparently no remaining constituency for the belief that high office should involve moral leadership.

Given human nature, this expectation was always a recipe for disillusionment. But while it is true that politicians are not called to be pastors, something has been lost in abandoning the ideal of rectitude. Trump did not just (allegedly) have a fling. He bragged about sexual assault and dismissed it as locker-room talk. He expanded the boundaries of acceptable misogyny.

It is one thing for public officials to fail a moral standard. That makes them human. It is something else to shift a standard in favor of cruelty and abuse. That makes them poor stewards of public trust. 

This points to an underestimated role for politics. Politicians may not be moral examples, but they help set the margins of permissible behavior and speech. I’m not talking about the law. We have a Constitution that protects hurtful, even hateful language. But public officials help determine the shape of social stigma, which is based on our self-conception as a community. 

[T]he stigmas we feel against misogyny and against racism are tremendous social achievements. Shifting those social expectations in favor of decency was the hard, sometimes dangerous work of generations. 

And political leaders — displaying good public character — have helped determine those expectations. It mattered when President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House. It helped break an oppressive social convention against the social mixing of blacks and whites. It mattered when Clinton began the tradition of celebrating Eid al-Fitr at the White House. It sent the signal that American public traditions reach beyond Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism. It also mattered when Trump in 2017 discontinued the White House Eid celebration.  

Trump’s political use of this idea [that "political correctness" has gone too far] has had little to do with academic freedom and disruptive student protests. It has had everything to do with testing the limits of prejudiced public language against migrants (particularly Mexicans) as potential rapists and Muslims (particularly refugees) as potential terrorists. 

This is a failure of public character with serious consequences. Trump is urging Americans to drink at a poisoned well of intolerance. This desensitizes some people to the moral seriousness of prejudice. It creates an atmosphere in which bigots gain confidence and traction. And one sad social consequence is the emboldened racism of Roseanne Barr and many like her, many of whom surely believe — on good evidence — that [Trump] the president of the United States is on their side. There are many drawbacks to being ignorant of and indifferent to history. But one of the worst is a failure to appreciate the depth of U.S. racism and the heroism of the long struggle against it. 

We are a country in which 1 out of 7 people was owned by another. We had an American version of apartheid within living memory. It was a hard-won lesson that racism is a form of oppression that destroys the soul of the oppressor as well. 

[I]t hurts to have [Trump] a president of poor character placing his thumb on the other side of the moral scale.

Trump has made it impossible for decent, moral people to support him and his agenda.  Those who continue to support him should be acknowledged by the decent, moral majority as being morally bankrupt and, in the case of evangelicals, utter hypocrites.