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The Moral Depravity of Donald Trump - and His Enablers

The Founding Fathers - despite their failings and irreconcilable positions on "right life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" even as supporting slavery - over all had a view of working for  a common good and a sense of morality.   Though hardly perfect and despite personal failings they had a larger, grander vision.  Fast forward to today and we see one of the two major political parties in thrall to a man who is the antithesis to what the Founder sought and embodies the type of demagogue the Founders feared when they established the Electoral College (which sadly failed its intended purpose in 2016). Donald Trump is a man who is morally depraved and cares about no one but himself and his own gratification and ego. Yet we see evangelicals  - a demographic I have long viewed as defined by hypocrisy and animosity towards others - supporting Trump perhaps more then anyone else save perhaps white supremacists (the two groups largely overlap each other).  Meanwhile, Trump's enablers within the GOP, many of whom know better but care only about pleasing the MAGA base continue to swear fealty to Trump regardless of what crimes he commits.  A piece in The Atlantic by a former Republican looks at the moral bankruptcy that defines Trump.  Here are highlights: 

Earlier this week, Donald Trump was arraigned in Miami on charges that he willfully retained documents containing some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets and obstructed justice when federal officials tried to retrieve them.

Trump was charged with more than three dozen criminal counts covering seven different violations of federal law. The indictment is a chilling and devastating portrait of a president who betrayed his country. But it comes as no surprise. It constitutes only the latest link in an extraordinary chain of corruption.

Trump doesn’t just cross moral lines; he doesn’t appear capable of understanding moral categories. Morality is for Trump what colors are to a person who is color-blind.

But what’s true of Trump isn’t true of the majority of his enablers. They see the colors that Trump cannot. They still know right from wrong. But for a combination of reasons, they have consistently overridden their conscience, in some cases unwittingly and in some cases cynically. They have talked themselves into believing, or half-believing, that Trump is America’s martyr and America’s savior.

Trump’s behavior obviously speaks to his own character. But Trump’s behavior has also proved to be a test of the character of others—Republican politicians and voters, the GOP establishment and the evangelical movement. It’s proved to be a test of character for those who claim to be “constitutional conservatives” and “family values” advocates, for ethicists and public intellectuals, for right-wing commentators and party strategists.

With very few exceptions, and to varying degrees, they have failed it. They have turned against—or at the very least, at a crucial hour, they have failed to defend—ideals and institutions they once claimed to cherish. Donald Trump could not have so deeply wounded our republic without his enablers. It took a team effort.

And now here we are, eight summers after Trump announced his first bid for the presidency, and we find him facing 71 felony counts while still 30 points above his nearest GOP rival, having transformed the Republican Party in his own image in ways that exceed even what Ronald Reagan did.

The moral wreckage of Donald Trump’s presidency and post-presidency was predictable and even inevitable. The reason? Trump’s moral depravity, which touches every area of his life, private and public, has long been in public view, undisguised and impossible to miss.

In July 2016, I described Trump as temperamentally unfit to be president—erratic, unprincipled, unstable, obsessive, a serial liar, and a misogynist who made racist appeals and who suffered from what, at the time, I called a “personality disorder.” On the day after Trump’s inauguration, I wrote, . . . This isn’t going to end well.” It hasn’t.

The scope and seriousness of Trump’s misconduct over the past eight years is staggering. He has relentlessly promoted lies and conspiracy theories, brutalized and dehumanized his opponents, threatened prosecutors and judges, and used his pardon power to subvert the legal system. He was found liable in a civil case of sexual abuse and defamation. . . . he is the first former president to be indicted, not once but twice. More indictments are likely to come.

Other shady and unethical individuals have served in the White House—Richard Nixon and Warren Harding among them—but Trump’s full-spectrum corruption puts him in a category all his own. His degeneracy is unmatched in American presidential history and unsurpassed in American political history.

Whatever the precise nature of Trump’s psychological pathologies—McAdams says Trump is “way more strange than any mental illness category that one can apply or create”—we can see for ourselves how they manifest: extreme narcissism, lack of empathy, feelings of persecution, grandiosity, and deceitfulness; impulsivity, shamelessness, remorselessness, and rage; a compulsive desire for attention, an obsessive need to dominate others, an eagerness to shatter social norms, and the belief that rules that apply to others don’t apply to him.

Aristotle, . . .  said in the Nicomachean Ethics, “The main concern of politics is to engender a certain character in the citizens and to make them good and disposed to perform noble actions.” . . . Donald Trump, rather than using the presidency to elevate human sensibilities, did the opposite, and he did it relentlessly. Among the most damaging legacies of the Trump years is his barbarization of America’s civic and political life.

In his first book as president of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, Václav Havel offered his reflections on the nature and practice of politics. Is there a place for morality and simple decency in politics? Did his ideals and principles, forged through two decades of courageous opposition to totalitarianism, have a place in public life?

Havel believed they did, but he knew it was a struggle. . . . It is a way of going about things, and it demands the courage to breathe moral and spiritual motivation into everything, to seek the human dimension in all things. Science, technology, expertise, and so-called professionalism are not enough. Something more is necessary. For the sake of simplicity, it might be called spirit. Or feeling. Or conscience.”

Trump has no conscience and neither do his Republican enablers.  As for evangelicals supporting Trump, they have put their own hypocrisy and moral depravity on display. 

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J. D. Vance and the GOP Yahoo Caucus

Growing up in the Republican Party there was a time when the majority of Republicans arguably put the common good and the nation above party and sometimes personal advancement - living in Virginia the late Senator John Warner is such an example.  In today's Republican Party, such individuals have vanished and have been replaced by a cadre of outwardly highly educated members in both the U.S. Senate and the House of representatives who care nothing about the common good or even the best interests of the country and place personal advancement and thrilling the most hideous elements of the party base above all else.   One such example is J.D. Vance who sold his soul in order to secure election to the U.S. Senate as laid out in a piece in The Atlantic.  But Vance is hardly alone and shares this trait with the likes of Josh Hawley, Tim Cotton, Ted Cruz and others - I'd include my law school classmate John Kennedy of Louisiana  and Elise Stefanik in the House as members of this group. Pandering to hate merchants, "Christian" extremists and white supremacists and waging war on all things "woke" - basically anything involving science, empathy, education and knowledge the worst elements of the GOP base deems threatening or demeaning - is the order of the day.  These people know better and simply care nothing of the harm they do to fellow citizens and American democracy and the moral bankruptcy of the GOP worsens with every passing day.  The piece in The Atlantic looks at Vance in particular, but he has lots of company.  Here are article highlights: 

When J. D. Vance first ran for office, he impressed some observers as a bridge between red and blue America. I was less impressed, but as a senator, he’s worse than even I expected; he’s become part of a caucus of panderers who are betraying the people they claim to represent.

I was appalled at his campaign and his rhetoric, but he has turned out to be even worse as a legislator than he was as a candidate.

Vance initially tried to position himself as a reasonable man from humble origins, someone who understood the angst of rural, Forgotten-Man America. He wrote a book about it, and in 2016 he warned the public—in The Atlantic, no less—that Donald Trump was “cultural heroin.” When he moved back to Ohio and stepped into the GOP Senate primary, Vance was running behind Josh Mandel, the hyper-ambitious former treasurer of Ohio, who was saying and tweeting unhinged things as a way of pulling out all the stops to capture a coalition of the most extreme primary voters.

And so Vance retooled both his approach and his personality. He pledged his sword to Donald Trump, who duly endorsed him and lifted him to a win in the primary. Vance then ran as the MAGA candidate, appearing onstage with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz and accepting their endorsements. This combination of pusillanimity and shamelessness, along with Trump’s support, helped Vance defeat the centrist Democrat Tim Ryan, and he headed back east to Washington.

What he once wore as electoral camouflage is now tattooed all over him, in yet another fulfillment of the late Kurt Vonnegut’s warning that, eventually, “we are what we pretend to be.”

In politics, you pay at least some of the debt you owe for a crucial endorsement, but Vance is paying it all—including a brutal vig. It’s one thing to hand-wave about supporting the nominee; it’s another entirely to speak up when staying quiet would be just as effective, and perhaps more sensible. But when you’re writing articles defending Donald Trump’s foreign policy—a radioactive subject many Republicans would rather ignore—you’re not just paying off what you owe the sharks; you’re begging to be part of the crew.

But Vance couldn’t resist the intoxicating call of performative irresponsibility, and he has managed to latch on to almost every MAGA hot-button issue in his short time on the Hill. (He even fawned over Tucker Carlson after he was fired by Fox News; most other Republicans quietly treated Carlson’s canceled show like a barrel of industrial sludge that they allowed to sink in a dark lake without trace or comment.) Last week, Vance responded to Trump’s indictment on 37 federal charges by vowing to put a hold on all Justice Department nominees.

[T]he Senate does much of its business, including scheduling votes on nominees, by “unanimous consent.” The current rules of the Senate allow any single senator to put a “hold” on a nominee by withholding such consent, thus preventing the chamber from acting on the nomination. This is a fairly routine maneuver most of the time; sometimes a senator places a hold because of a particular concern or question—or sometimes, because of a political vendetta.

But Vance is just shilling for Trump by preventing the entire Senate from voting on any and all nominees to the Justice Department. This puts him in the exalted company of another Senate giant, Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville, who is holding up the promotions of some 200 senior U.S. military officers because he’s upset about expanded abortion provisions for service members. (He is also feuding with the Pentagon over various other culture-war grievances.) Vance and Tuberville are engaging in “blanket” holds not against any one person, but against an entire class of nominees.

This is not the Senate’s “advice and consent”; this is the howling of the Yahoo Caucus. . . . the GOP is engaging in a “full-on trashing and undermining of the government,” creating “a civic and physical hazard to America” merely to defend Trump from even mild criticism.

Tuberville has repeatedly shown, much like Trump himself, that he does not understand how the American government actually works. Vance (a graduate of Ohio State and Yale) and Massie (who holds a degree in engineering from MIT) both know better, and that makes their actions even more odious. These legislators are showing contempt not only for their constitutional duty but for their constituents by treating them like credulous rubes in order to harvest their anger and their votes.

Tuberville, perhaps, never had a chance to be a better legislator. Massie might simply be an engineer who knows a lot about one thing and almost nothing about anything else. But Vance is different: He’s an intelligent and educated man who has chosen a shameful path in Congress as if his lifetime of opportunities and second chances never happened.

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Republican Priority: Ban Free School Meals, Cut Social Security

The Republican Party pretends to be the party of "family values" and "Christian values" yet its budget priorities are the antithesis to Christ's New Testament message of caring for the poor, the sick and the homeless.  The GOP's real agenda is cut programs that help the millions of Americans, including children, and give further tax cuts to the very wealthy and large corporations - adding $2.5 trillion to the deficit they pretend to care about - while slashing safety regulations.  The hypocrisy is mind numbing.  As is the hypocrisy of evangelicals who back the GOP agenda that frankly views millions of American as disposable. Only the wealthy matter to Republicans as they use "god, guns and gays" to dupe ignorant and bigoted voters into voting against their own economic best interests.  If Republicans care about any parts of the bible, it is only the Old Testament provisions that revel in the murder of men. women and children and smiting ones enemies (they also studiously ignore the polygamy that was rife in the Old Testament as they continue campaign against same sex marriage).  A piece in The New Republic looks at the GOP's ugly budget proposals that embody the party's reverse Robin Hood agenda.  Here are excerpts:

States across the country are moving to provide universal free school meals to all our children. Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to stop them from doing just that.

The Republican Study Committee (of which some three-quarters of House Republicans are members) on Wednesday released its desired 2024 budget, in which the party boldly declares its priority to eliminate the Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, from the School Lunch Program. Why? Because “CEP allows certain schools to provide free school lunches regardless of the individual eligibility of each student.”

[I]t is a meal service program reserved for qualifying schools and districts in low-income areas. The program enables schools that predominantly serve children from low-income backgrounds to offer all students free breakfast and lunch, instead of means-testing them and having to manage collecting applications on an individual basis. As with many universal-oriented programs, it is more practically efficient and, as a bonus, lifts all boats. This is what Republicans are looking to eliminate.

[A]s California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, and as of this week, Vermont, all move to provide universal free school meals in one form or another—and at least another 21 states consider similar moves—Republicans are trying to whittle down avenues to accomplish that goal.

Along with trying to stop schools from giving all their students free meals, the proposed 2024 Republican budget includes efforts to:

• cut Social Security and Medicare
• make Trump’s tax cuts for the top 1 percent permanent
• impose work requirements on “all federal benefit programs,” like food stamps and Medicare
• extend work requirements on those aged 55–64
• bring back all of twice-impeached and twice-arrested former President Donald Trump’s deregulations, including the weakening of environmental protection.

And that’s just a taste of their hopes and dreams. But don’t mistake it all as just wish-casting: “The RSC Budget is more than just a financial statement. It is a statement of priorities,” the party assures in the document.

The proposed budget would effectively make cuts to Social Security by increasing the retirement age for future retirees.  The document seeks to assure people that there would only be “modest adjustments” but does not list what Republicans think the new retirement age should be.

On Medicare, Republicans propose requiring disabled Americans to wait longer before getting benefits and turning Medicare into a “premium support” system, a long-floated Republican idea that essentially turns the government program into a voucher scheme. Such a scheme would remove the guarantee for seniors to have affordable access to Medicare.

As far as taxes go, the party wants to make permanent the individual provisions of Trump’s tax cut bill, which gave a roughly $49,000 annual tax cut to the top 1 percent and only $500 to those in the bottom 60 percent. In doing so, they’d add nearly $2.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The party also wants to eliminate the estate tax, which only impacts those who inherit assets worth at least $13 million.

How working class voters - now a main stay of the GOP - believe this agenda helps them is impossible to comprehend. 

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