A Warning

by Anonymous

The president’s untruths resonate with supporters due to their “confirmation bias.” Humans tend to interpret new information as evidence to support preexisting views. For example, if you think dogs are dangerous and someone tells you that a rabid canine is roaming the neighborhood, you are more likely to accept it as a fact and less likely to question it as a rumor, because you already believe dogs are vicious. The social media age has put this cognitive defect on steroids. We can now reinforce our opinions instantly with supporting “facts” found in tweets, on blogs, on liberal or conservative websites, and beyond.

We are now living in different realities. As evidence, a 2019 survey found Republicans and Democrats are further apart than ever on the issues they say should be the government’s top priorities. The most recent study found “there is virtually no common ground in the priorities that rise to the top of the lists” between the two sides. Democratic respondents said our nation’s biggest challenges were health care, education, the environment, Medicare, and poverty. Republicans said they were terrorism, the economy, Social Security, immigration, and the military.

Speaking to a group of Civil War veterans in 1875, Ulysses S. Grant speculated that if ever the nation were torn apart again, it would not be split North versus South along the infamous Mason-Dixon Line, the geographic boundary that separated free states and slave states. He surmised that in the future the dividing line would be reason itself, with intelligence on one side and ignorance on the other. Grant was a student of history. He knew that in societies where truth comes under attack, the fertile soil is tilled for violent conflict.

Austrian philosopher Karl Popper took it a step further, writing, “The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, the more surely do we arrive at the Inquisition, at the Secret Police, and at a romanticized gangsterism,” a horrible degeneration that begins with the push of a domino—“the suppression of reason and truth.”

Today we have a digital Mason-Dixon Line. It is splitting our country right down the middle, all the way to the household level. Donald Trump is not its sole cause. The line was drawn by the disruptive effects of technology and the fundamentals of human psychology, but the president’s demagoguery has worsened the problem. His words are reshaping who we are.

“The President hears a hundred voices telling him that he is the greatest man in the world. He must listen carefully indeed to hear the one voice that tells him he is not.” —Harry Truman

When people don’t have to take something seriously, they ridicule it. When they do have to take it seriously, they criticize it.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own…and so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness.

Finally, Hayek said, authoritarian types need to weld the group together by appealing to their basic human weaknesses. “It seems to be easier for people to agree on a negative program—on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of the better off—than on any positive task.

During my time in the Trump administration, I have witnessed three primary motivations for what a passerby would call brainwashing. Power, tribal allegiance, and fear.

One superb political study out of Brigham Young University found that “group loyalty is the stronger motivator of opinion than are any ideological principles.”

On this score, I want to speak to Trump’s political opponents and his harshest critics, the ones who want him thrown out of office at any cost. I understand your frustration. I, too, have developed strong opinions about the president’s performance and whether he deserves to continue leading our great nation. But when we engage in careless speculation about the president’s ouster, we are promoting a level of anti-democratic behavior on par with the conduct for which we are criticizing Trump.

While the president has unquestionably engaged in conduct that is detrimental to our country, we should never encourage bad behavior only so we can punish it.

To permit a wrong—or to encourage one—is to be culpable in it.

There is a single right way, prescribed by the architects of this country, for holding our leaders to account. It is as elegant as it is blunt. It is the transmission line for all power in our political system, determining who gains, retains, and loses authority. It is the election.

We must remember that we are whom we elect. “Like man, like state,” Plato wrote two millennia ago.

“Governments vary as the characters of men vary. States are made out of the human natures which are in them.” The government of the United States is whatever it is because the people are whatever they are. The nature of one man, the president, is not what shapes the collective attributes of a nation. It is the other way around. Our views, our aspirations, and our morality are what define the republic and are meant to be reflected by the people we elect.

On voting day, we will have had four years to make up our minds about Donald Trump. Entering the booth, there will be many factors to weigh when considering whether to reelect him to the presidency. Is he more qualified than the others? Is he offering a more compelling agenda? Has he demonstrated a record of success? As we stare...

There is a third answer, though: “Yes, he does. But it’s not acceptable.” A voter may conclude that Donald Trump’s roller-coaster presidency is a faithful representation of what is happening in our society. They may argue that the 2016 presidential election resulted in the elevation of a man who embodied our country’s internal strife. His measure of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance is a strong indicator of whether we are demonstrating those traits ourselves. Yet that doesn’t mean we have to submit to the malaise. We can admit that, although we ended up with the president we deserved the first time, we want better.

Trump relishes the cocoon he has built. He will not exit quietly—or easily. It is why at many turns he suggests “coups” are afoot and a “civil war” is in the offing. He is already seeding the narrative for his followers—a narrative that could end tragically.

The Trump administration is an unmitigated catastrophe, and the responsibility rests entirely at his feet, the predictable outcome of assigning organizational leadership to a man of weak morals. What is more regrettable is that his faults are amplifying our own. I believe firmly that whatever benefits we may have gained from individual Trump policies are vastly outweighed by the incalculable damage he has done to the fabric of our republic.

Republicans will face a trade-off: “Pick the devil I know, Donald Trump, whose views align more closely with mine but whose moral code is visibly compromised. Or pick the devil I don’t, a Democrat, who will fight for policies I disagree with but is probably a more decent person.”

It’s easier to fix mistakes wrought by bad policies than those wrought by bad people.

We’d be better off as a party opposing the agenda of a weak president from the outside than apologizing for one from within.

Republicans will argue that the other candidate, as president, would attack our free-market principles, tax us into economic recession, promote a thought-police culture of political correctness, fan the flames of identity politics, and bring government into our lives like never before.

Americans worried about a second term of Donald Trump have another choice on Election Day I’ve not yet mentioned. There is one final option for preventing him from wreaking havoc for another four years if he’s reelected. It’s an insurance policy, and it will be right in front of you when you step into the voting booth. Look down. Democracy’s next-best safeguard is the rest of the ballot. You will have a slate of aspiring public officials to choose from who can hold the US government accountable. Don’t focus solely on your pick for the nation’s highest office and play roulette with the rest of the candidates running for the US Senate, the House, state offices, and so on. You must consider which of these people are ready to lead. Are they prepared to keep the president and our executive branch in check? Will they be unafraid to speak the truth? Do they have the honorableness and decency that have become endangered traits in today’s politics? If we exercise good judgment on the rest of the ballot we can better protect our country’s institutions and its future.

One might blame Trump for provoking widespread discontent instead of cohesion after Russia’s interference. Go ahead and reread the above paragraph. It’s still stunning to recall that this was the president’s reaction. Ultimately, though, it was our choice whether to follow his lead. We decided to indulge in irrational speculation. We decided to engage in social media warfare. We decided to alienate neighbors based on whether they agreed with Trump or not. Our response to the attack led to record

levels of incivility.

Americans do not need to grasp blindly in the dark to find the boogeyman that is haunting our civic lives. We need only to look in the mirror. Our representatives are not the source of Washington’s problems. We are the ones who pick them. If you can give the Founders credit for anything, the democratic system reflects the public mood. When we are willing to compromise, our representatives are, too. When we are angry and unyielding, partisan and greedy, they will display the same traits. As a result, we are getting the presidency we deserve and the Congress we deserve.

Is it not obvious that elected leaders are mimicking our behavior? Their snarky attacks and Twitter jabs sound a lot like the text messages we send, the comments we make below news articles, and the condescending memes we post to Facebook because it’s easier to fire rounds from behind a digital wall than hash out problems face-to-face. It’s no wonder people think Washington is broken. We are broken.

We can drain the swamp if we want by firing Donald Trump and electing a new Congress. I strongly believe the first action will make a difference. But lasting change will require deeper, nationwide self-reflection. It will require us to alter ourselves—to consider who we were, who we are, and who we want to be.

We can either bury our heads in the sand, hoping it gets better by itself. Or we can recognize the situation for what it is and, rather than allow political turmoil to hasten our demise, begin a restoration. It’s time to start searching for guideposts to rejuvenate public life. We need a “civic renaissance” for our day and age. That’s how we’ll right the ship. It requires dusting off the lessons of our forebears—updating them for the modern world—and reinvigorating active participation in our civic life.

we need to restore a climate of truth by clearing the air of misinformation and changing how we report, consume, and share news so we aren’t living in different realities. We must also relearn the art of “agreeing to disagree” with people whose political views we don’t share, rather than alienating them. If we escape our echo chambers it will make it easier to cooperate on issues large and small. It’s likewise important for us to begin reassociating in person. Our proclivity to participate in voluntary organizations was long a defining aspect of the American story, and we’ve been called a “nation of joiners,” a trait that has allowed us to develop a democratic culture unlike any other. Sadly, our growing interconnectedness online is making us disconnected from one another, so we must find new ways to engage.

We need to get serious about preparing our children for the biggest job title they’ll ever have—citizen. It’s no exaggeration to suggest, as my teacher once did, that our very lives depend on it.

If we look within ourselves and undertake the arduous task of moral repair, America can restore the soul of its political system. We can once again illuminate a pathway for others onto the vaunted plazas of open society. If, however, we shrink from the task, our names will be recorded by history as those who didn’t pass the torch but let its light expire. That is my warning. Every American generation before us faced and passed this test. Our charge is to do the same, proving that the United States can do what other civilizations could not—survive the ages—and bend the arc of the moral universe toward the value that is the real sinew of civic life: freedom. Let’s roll.