If Anyone is Asking, the Answer is ‘No,’ We Cannot All Just Get Along**
Heather Cox Richardson’s December 13, 2024 Letters from an American details a litany of Trump’s conflicts of interest, his graft, nativism, lies, contradictions, bigotry, nepotism, corruption, weaponization of the DOJ as his personal goon squad, the incompetence of many of his nominees, and the danger they pose to the nation’s security, the public’s health, safety, and welfare, and fundamental human, civil, and constitutional rights.
Those in the center and left and members of the media who are appeasing, normalizing, or making nice with Trump are encouraging the most corrupt and dangerous person — and what will be the most destructive administration — in U.S. history. This week, Chris Hayes observed: “What is so disturbing, enraging, alienating about everyone who is doing this — the capitulation to Trump — is that it fundamentally ignores the gaping wound in American democracy.” See Billionaires and Democrats paying lip service to Trump are in for a rude awakening.
I was disappointed by ABC News being cowed into paying $16 million to settle Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the news organization, which includes $15 million toward some future presidential foundation or museum and $1 million for attorney fees. The lawsuit arose out of a March 2024 interview of Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who has publicly said she was raped as a teenager, in which George Stephanopoulos asked why the congresswoman continued to support a candidate after he was found “liable for rape” in a 2023 case in New York. After Trump filed the lawsuit saying the jury did not technically find it was “rape,” even though the judge clarified, yes, “Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll,” Stephanopoulos told Stephen Colbert, “I’m not going to be cowed out of doing my job because of the threat of Donald Trump.” Even in today’s dollars, $16 million seems like a cow.
The few remaining guardrails are being dissolved.
You remember Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts.” Absent agreement on even the most basic facts, that absurdity means people cannot communicate in any attempt to resolve differences or conflict, they cannot begin to have a meaningful conversation.
Trump and his people operate at such self-serving, depraved, and reprehensible levels, morally responsible adults find little to nothing in the president elect or his policies they can accept. Meaningful communication on issues of moral consequence is, therefore, likewise unavailable. So if anyone is asking, the answer is an emphatic “no,” we cannot all just get along.
Where on Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development are United States Senators?*
“How in the world can these senators walk around here upright when they have no backbone?,” a journalist asked Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), after Trump was acquitted in his first impeachment trial. In his February 5, 2020 Opinion in The New York Times, Senator Brown explained:
“In the United States Senate, like in many spheres in life, fear does the business. . . . History has indeed taught us that when it comes to instincts that drive us, fear has no rival. As the lead House impeachment manager, Representative Adam Schiff, has noted Robert Kennedy spoke of how ‘moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle.’”
“Fear has a way of bending us.
“Late in the evening on day four of the trial I saw it, just 10 feet across the aisle from my seat at Desk 88, when Mr. Schiff told the Senate: ‘CBS News reported last night that a Trump confidant said that Republican senators were warned, “Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.’” The response from Republicans was immediate and furious. Several groaned and protested and muttered, ‘Not true.’ But pike or no pike, Mr. Schiff had clearly struck a nerve. . . .
“Of course, the Republican senators who have covered for Mr. Trump love what he delivers for them. But Vice President Mike Pence would give them the same judges, the same tax cuts, the same attacks on workers’ rights and the environment. So that’s not really the reason for their united chorus of ‘not guilty.’
“For the stay-in-office-at-all-cost representatives and senators, fear is the motivator. They are afraid that Mr. Trump might give them a nickname like ‘Low Energy Jeb’ and ‘Lyin’ Ted,’ or that he might tweet about their disloyalty. Or — worst of all — that he might come to their state to campaign against them in the Republican primary. They worry:
“‘Will the hosts on Fox attack me?’
“‘Will the mouthpieces on talk radio go after me?’
“‘Will the Twitter trolls turn their followers against me?’
“My colleagues know they all just might. There’s an old Russian proverb: The tallest blade of grass is the first cut by the scythe. In private, many of my colleagues agree that the president is reckless and unfit. They admit his lies. And they acknowledge what he did was wrong. They know this president has done things Richard Nixon never did. And they know that more damning evidence is likely to come out.
“So watching the mental contortions they perform to justify their votes is painful to behold . . . .
“I have asked some of them, ‘If the Senate votes to acquit, what will you do to keep this president from getting worse?’ Their responses have been shrugs and sheepish looks.
“They stop short of explicitly saying that they are afraid. We all want to think that we always stand up for right and fight against wrong. But history does not look kindly on politicians who cannot fathom a fate worse than losing an upcoming election. They might claim fealty to their cause — those tax cuts — but often it’s a simple attachment to power that keeps them captured.
“As Senator Murray said on the Senate floor in 2002, ‘We can act out of fear’ or ‘we can stick to our principles.’ Unfortunately, in this Senate, fear has had its way.”
In Private, Republicans Admit They Acquitted Trump Out of Fear (emphasis added).
Thursday, December 12, 2024, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said, “‘it’s going to be hard in these next four years’ because the Trump administration’s ‘approach is going to be: Everybody tow the line. Everybody line up. We got you here, and if you want to survive, you better be good. Don’t get on Santa’s naughty list here, because we will primary you.’”
Lisa Murkowski’s Santa metaphor is descriptive of Trump’s loyalty test for nominees and appointees to positions in his administration, for senators who will vote whether to confirm Trump’s wildly unqualified, compromised, and dangerous nominees, and for legislators who will be voting on policies supportive of a Trump agenda. Only a very few parents, after all, have not used fear or reward to manipulate a child’s behavior by invoking Santa. Particularly susceptible to the Big Santa Lie are children whose moral development is at the earliest stages and who, therefore, are easily induced to behave in certain ways through threat of punishment or promise of reward. The Trump loyalty test appears to be designed to weed out (or primary) anyone who is willing to exhibit independent moral judgment beyond Kohlberg’s pre-conventional stage of moral development — obedience induced by the threat of punishment (fear) or promise of personal reward.
The Senate must reject all nominees who prove their support for America’s “gaping wound in democracy” by passing Trump’s loyalty test
Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr., said in July that his goal is to “keep ‘bad actors’ from infiltrating his father’s administration — unlike those who turned against Trump during his first administration.” Those “bad actors,” whom Trump has labeled “traitors” and “snakes,” were members of his prior administration who exhibited complex levels of moral judgment and decision making that are lightyears outside Trump’s cognitive universe and everything he values. “Traitors” and “snakes” who saw Trump as a threat to democracy included Trump’s chief of staff John F. Kelly and defense secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark T. Esper.
Prospective appointees to posts inside the Trump administration, “including inside the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, say they have been asked about their thoughts on Jan. 6 and who they believe won the 2020 elections. . . . [S]ome of them have been asked a final set of questions that seemed designed to assess their loyalty to President-elect Donald J. Trump. . . . The interviewers asked which candidate the applicants had supported in the three most recent elections, what they thought about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen. The sense they got was that there was only one right answer to each question. . . . Among those were applicants who said they gave what they intuited to be the wrong answer — either decrying the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 or saying that President Biden won in 2020. Their answers were met with silence and the taking of notes. They didn’t get the jobs.” Want a Job in the Trump Administration? Be Prepared for the Loyalty Test (emphasis added).
Trump’s incoming White House press secretary has assured us that “President Trump will continue to appoint highly qualified men and women who have the talent, experience, and necessary skill sets to make America great again.” Past with Trump is dangerous prologue. Stand up straight, senators, by placing the good of the country above reward for cowardice or fear that having the courage of moral principle could mean being primaried.
A little over five years ago I posted, By Making Patriotism and Morality Coextensive with Raw Political Expedience and Self Interest, They Advance the Demise of Liberal Democracy. The focus of that essay was Marie L. Yovanovitch who, in defiance of a Trump White House directive, appeared before three house committees in a display of morally uncompromised courage rarely seen inside the Beltway. Yovanovitch, you may recall, was serving as Ambassador to Ukraine when she was unceremoniously removed for doing her job. Her appearance and opening statement serve as examples of what it means to love one’s country, serve one’s country, swear and honor an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and put country before self. I said:
“They won’t admit it, but the Party of Trump disavows most of the principles that once united its members in a common purpose. The Party of Trump has abandoned its belief in American exceptionalism and, frankly, normative values. Standing with Trump, its members now endorse and affirm a set of principles which unite its members in a new common purpose, and which stand in sharp contrast to those the Republican Party once embraced and symbolized. Prominent conservatives, moral standard bearers, flee the Party. They publish dire warnings, not just for the Party’s downfall but for that of liberal democracy in the United States. They do so for the benefit of those who remain, whose morality and patriotism, expressly or through silence and acquiescence, are coextensive with the whims of Trump’s political expediency and narcissistic sociopathy. They do so for the cowards, the elected officials who could not muster the courage. If these members of the House and Senate ever do the right thing, it won’t be for the right reason. That opportunity passed.
“The Republican Party claimed to be a Party of principle, the Party of the Constitution; was once an uncompromising adherent to the rule of law; recognized and sought to preserve the constitutional separation of powers and checks and balances, and to keep executive power in check; opposed executive orders to enact national policies in areas it claimed were constitutionally reserved solely to Congress; boasted of America’s moral leadership throughout the world; prided itself as a strident defender, guardian and proponent of human rights here and throughout the world; claimed to be a stalwart enemy of regimes that commit atrocities and crimes against humanity; recognized its country as a refuge, and a defender and exemplar of liberty; saw the United States as a beacon for good, where its enemies feared us and our friends and allies trusted us, a country worthy of that trust; claimed to be the fiscally responsible steward; advocated for elected officials to be accountable to its citizens; insisted its country must have fair and free elections, strictly prohibiting foreign influence and interference; refused to accept any territorial change in Eastern Europe imposed by force — in Ukraine, Georgia, or elsewhere; opposed administrations that sought to divide America into groups and turn citizen against citizen.”
Notes:
Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development:
* “Kohlberg’s levels of moral development are as follows: The Preconventional level: children accept the authority (and moral code) of others. If an action leads to punishment, it must be bad. If it leads to a reward, it must be good. There is also a sense in which decisions concerning what is good are defined in terms of what is good for us. The Conventional level: children believe that social rules and the expectations of others determine what is acceptable or unacceptable behavior. A social system that stresses the responsibilities of relationships and social order is seen as desirable and must, therefore, influence our views of right and wrong. The Postconventional level: here what is right is based on an individual’s understanding of universal ethical principles. What is considered morally acceptable in any given situation is determined by what is the response most in keeping with these principles.”
R.VanWagoner https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner publishes. https://richardvanwagoner.medium.com/subscribe
**My brother the very talented fiction writer and novelist, Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, deserves considerable credit for offering both substantive and technical suggestions to https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner. Rob’s second novel is a beautifully written suspense drama that takes place in Utah, Wyoming, and Norway. This novel, The Contortionists, which Rob himself narrates for the audio version, is a psychological page-turner about a missing child in a predominantly Mormon community. I have read the novel and listened to the audio version twice. It is a literary masterpiece. The Contortionists is not, however, for the faint of heart.
***Richard J Van Wagoner is my father. His list of honors, awards, and professional associations is extensive. He was Professor Emeritus (Painting and Drawing), Weber State University, having served three Appointments as Chair of the Department of Visual Arts there. He guest-lectured and instructed at many universities and juried numerous shows and exhibitions. He was invited to submit his work as part of many shows and exhibitions, and his work was exhibited in many traveling shows domestically and internationally. My daughter Angela Van Wagoner, a professional photographer, photographed more than 500 pieces of my father’s work. The photographs of my father’s art reproduced in https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner are hers.