Cultural Decline

Given the immensity of the damage caused daily by Trump and his corrupt, clown-car administration, a focus on his profoundly negative effect on American culture may seem minor. After all, unlike RFK, Jr.’s effect on American health, DOGE’s erasure of USAID, and Trump’s wars of choice,  people aren’t dying when he posts his childish, ungrammatical rants on his ridiculous “Truth Social.”

But I would argue that the longterm results of Trump’s wholesale assault on decency and civility are immensely consequential. And once again, Stuart Stevens has articulated my concerns. 

In an essay about Robert Mueller and his own father, Stevens quoted James Fallows, who had reacted to Trump’s post when Mueller died (“Good, I’m glad he’s dead,”) by writing that it was “the most despicable public statement by an American public official in my lifetime.” Stevens agreed, calling it a “vomit-inducing celebration of the death of an American hero.” He then connected it to what he termed the GOP’s “mass suicide of decency,” and offered an illuminating analogy:

This is not about Trump. He’s a deeply disturbed sociopath slipping into the darkness of dementia and failing health. It is about the collective failure of the Republican party to exhibit even a base level of admirable human qualities. If a woman is raped in a busy airport and the passengers ignore it and walk by, the shame and guilt is shared by every person who looks the other way. When they stop to cheer the rapist, they are active participants in the horrific crime…

The genius of Donald Trump is that he recognized with some feral instinct that the Republican Party did not believe in anything but power, and if he gave them power, there was no bottom to the degradation they would both endure and inflict. So we watch an entire political party stand silent while they watch him disgrace the office of the presidency, which is to betray every American.

Lest we miss the broader implications of what Stevens is (accurately) describing, he enumerates them:

What happens to a society that elevates the worst in its midst and demeans the best? It was no accident of birth that America produced so many men like my father and Robert Mueller. They grew up in a culture that honored sacrifice, decency, character. There was an assumed civic bond linking personal conduct to the greater good.

That is the legacy that these Republicans have betrayed. Like those in a lynch mob, they take comfort in their numbers. When Republican elected officials look at their phones and see the man who they embraced gleefully over Robert Mueller’s death, they know it’s wrong. They know they would never want to see their children show such crass cruelty. But then they put down their phones and try to convince themselves it doesn’t matter.

The decline of decency and civility is not a small matter. We are all–far more than most of us realize–products of the cultures in which we live our daily lives. We adapt to its expectations, and understand that others will evaluate us based upon behaviors that are considered appropriate in that culture.

Uncivil and thuggish behaviors from public officials fray the bonds between citizens, turning Americans against each other. Such behaviors erode our humanity by scorning the human empathy and kindness that connects us to others. In a society as diverse as ours, the message is that some people consider themselves superior to others and that those “superior” folks believe they are entitled to the childish contempt they show for others.

Scroll through the comment sections of posts to social media and you will see the results.

The best part of the recent NO KINGS protests were the multiple signs that explicitly rejected that descent into thuggery and the accompanying erosion of our civic solidarity–signs that celebrated the inclusion of all Americans into a capacious We The People.

When we finally eject this corrupt and immature collection of clowns, grifters and fascists, we need to turn our attention to three very important tasks: we need to hold the participants in this autocratic and unAmerican effort responsible–preferably via a very public version of the Nuremberg  trials. We need to undertake the repair and modification of the government systems that allowed–indeed, facilitated– the erosion of our constitutional democracy, and we need to elevate a culture that honors decency, civility and character–a culture that respects knowledge, objective fact, science and expertise, and marginalizes anti-intellectualism and tribalism.

Our children and grandchildren deserve thoughtful adult role-models.