WHERE HAS ETHICS GONE?

Behind Trump's policies lies a universe of human suffering. The stories of those affected need to be told.

The military theorist Carl von Clausewitz had famously remarked “War is politics by other means...” Politics is a struggle for power, and war, we may conclude, is its violent manifestation.

This has become palpably apparent in the current moment. Politics is always a matter of strategizing, scheming, horse-trading, and engineering ruses to gain the upper hand. Politics involves an element of cunning, and veers toward deception while claiming to maintain honorable appearances.

Donald Trump has introduced into our political battlefield elements that are uniquely vitriolic and nasty. Boldface and chronic lying are a mainstay of his persona. He has inspired his followers with appeals to vindictiveness and hatred. He has invoked churlish name-calling to belittle those he does not like, and he dangerously scapegoats people who are marginalized and relatively powerless. What is especially fretful is that Trump's behavior sets an example for tens of millions of Americans who believe that he has something of value to offer them and American society. In ways that are bewildering in their scope, Donald Trump has poisoned the American landscape. The drumbeat of sadism in public affairs is met by many without a shrug.

Trump has issued his policies like a blunderbuss firing in all directions thus keeping the American public off balance. Marshaling coherent and effective responses has become elusive, while democracy hangs in the balance.

While Trump lies, belittles, and excoriates, ethics has fallen out of public vocabulary. One seldom hears the word, and one witnesses too infrequently an ethical critique or condemnation of his immoral behavior.

What is ethics? In the most common sense, ethics partakes of rules pertaining to principles or conduct that is good or bad, or right or wrong. But ethics extends far more broadly and reaches far deeper. Ultimately, it touches the sublime.

I need to be personal. I recently retired from more than half a century as a professional leader in the Ethical Culture Movement. Ethical Culture is a religio-philosophical movement, founded in the 19th century, that holds that appreciation and reverence for ethical ideals should be foremost in guiding our conduct and molding our characters. Striving to be ethical in our relations to others needs to be our highest calling, and as such, is a fount of meaning and purpose. In this regard, ethics extends far beyond the mere application of rules.

Tracing its thought to the moral ideas of the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, Ethical Culture extols respect and reference for the dignity of human beings, others, and oneself, as our supreme obligation. It understands that dignity is commensurate with our humanity. Whereas such respect readily enjoins us as to what we ought not to do – we ought not to enslave, torture, belittle, deceive, lie, or otherwise exploit and abuse others – it also speaks to upholding positive and softer ethical values. Respecting human beings needs to evoke compassion and caring, kindness, and behaviors that foster mutual support. Moving further, and imbuing human relations with the sublime, encourages us to refine our capacity for empathy. It involves being willing to take the standpoint of the other to see the world as she or he sees it. By engaging the indwelling humanity of the other, ethical relations in the deepest sense, touches a transcendent element within the human plane. It strengthens the human bond and deepens our appreciation of the human experience in ways that matter most.

These values should come to the fore at a time when they are being so stridently suppressed. Yet one sees too little discussion of the moral impact of Trump's policies coming from either among political leaders, or the commentariat. It took too long for the press to overtly label Trump as a liar. There was extensive prevarication in identifying him as a fascist. Yet facts made denial and hedging no longer possible, and such usage has now become commonplace.

What one hears too little of is the human toll of Trump's despotic policies. Nicolas Kristoff deserves credit for his first-hand description of the victims of the dismantling of the US foreign aid, most notably tagged to U.S. A.I. D; the multitudes who will starve to death, the young women who will die in childbirth, and the children, countless thousands, who will succumb to disease, all of who can be saved at little cost. The human suffering, which has already begun, will be monumental. An impersonal budgetary calculus, driven by political grandstanding, will lead to widespread death, illness, and pain for an untold number of fellow human beings. The ethical dimension can be too readily lost in the political fireworks, but we should not become detached from or lose sight of the human misery these decisions cause. To ignore them is to diminish our own humanity.

Closer to home, MAGA acolytes may cheer Trump's deportation policies, but it is an assault on the fundamental principles of our democracy, inclusive of due process. But it is more. ICE is a rogue agency, whose operatives bear a frightening resemblance to Hitler's brown shirts. They are thugs fitted in black garb and masked. Their raids have become a species of official kidnapping. ICE agents don't carry identification, which means that they bear no accountability. For those questioning whether fascism has arrived, one need not look further. To make the point, I, at times, harbor the thought that the roles should be reversed. What if those opposed to ICE operations would adopt the same mien and tactics and begin to kidnap ICE agents and cart them off, without notification to others, to far-away detention centers? A point about accountability would be made.

A recent investigation by the New York Times has uncovered the conditions in the detention facilities. They are beginning to experience mass overcrowding. They are filthy. Toilets, often broken, are shared by scores of inmates. There is no opportunity to shower or change one's underwear, frequently for more than a week. The food is inadequate and often rotten. When working with Amnesty International I would often read reports of such conditions in third-world dictatorships. They reflected the worst of human rights conditions. I now ask myself, “Is this what the United States has come to?” Anyone with a modicum of human sensibility should feel a sense of shame. I would like our leadership and media to speak this language, describing the fallout of Trump's policies in human and graphic terms. Discussion at the political level alone serves to mask the human realities.

It was Nicolo Machiavelli, who famously noted in his Prince, that if a ruler wishes to hold onto power, it is best that he be both loved and feared. But if sustaining both is not possible “it is much safer to be feared than loved.” Trump and his policies are a caricature of Machiavellian insight. Trump craves love and adoration to an extent that is assuredly pathological. But he has also augmented his power and authority by generating fear which extends down to the American public as a whole.

The fear among immigrants is palpable. It extends beyond the undocumented to place all immigrants, all those with dark skins, under suspicion. But the fear fans out much more broadly. We are all now forced to take a new position vis-a-vis authority that was not the case prior to Trump's anti-immigrant crusade. If I am driving in my car with a person of Latino heritage and stopped by the police, given my commitments, I am now in a potentially adversarial position with the police that I wasn't heretofore. Trump has learned well that fear is a powerful mechanism by which to effectuate social control.

Trump's “big beautiful bill,” just passed, promises to be a nightmare for those dependent on Medicaid for their coverage. With cuts up to 1 trillion dollars, it is estimated that 11.8 million Americans will lose health insurance in a decade. While the new law will further enrich the rich and super-rich, those who will primarily suffer are the poor, minorities, children, and the disabled, who disproportionately are dependent on government insurance. With the weakening of Medicaid, the United States moves further from the principle of health care as a right. Rather, finding care for many will be a struggle and a source of unremitting anxiety over life and death issues. Not only will individuals lose their coverage, but hospitals and health clinics will close, many in rural areas. Patients in nursing homes, which are already stressed, will lose their coverage. The pressure put on families who will need to scurry around to find alternatives, and the incumbent anxiety is incalculable. Political leaders, indeed all of us, need to visualize these circumstances.

Senator Mitch McConnell, in anticipation of the passage of the bill, and the deprivation of millions who will suffer, responded, “They will get over it.” The good senator's cavalier observation reflects the callousness and cruelty that lie beneath the surface of the wave of sadistic policies that Trump and his sycophantic followers so cheerfully institute. We need to imagine parents, living from check to check, not being able to find medical help for a sick child. Or, the parents with disabled children who will lose their support. The collective pain and suffering that will be caused by the removal of the Medicaid coverage is simply incalculable.

Political choices bear ethical consequences, and these consequences are felt intimately by those who suffer because of them.

Polls have shown that Trump's megabill is broadly unpopular. But that unpopularity will not alter the political landscape until people feel the discomfort, anxiety, and pain Trump's policies generate. This should be the case for those directly affected. But for those not, rationalization can come too easily. The pain and suffering which is not directly theirs can feel like an abstraction. Or, as suggested, it can be transmuted into political issues removed from the realities of experience.

The best chance of reaching and altering the views of those who are primarily witnesses is for the discourse to change. What's needed are more first-hand testimonies, more stories, and narratives of those on the receiving end of the mass cruelty being foisted on us by an administration for whom the emotional universe of compassion and kindness is totally absent.

Proximity fosters compassion. But for the majority of people who are not directly part of our lives, we need stories told, most of all, by those who have the ears of the public; those in positions of leadership, by commentators, and by those who report what is newsworthy. Once we have introduced the human factor - ethics -in the most fundamental sense, into our understanding of where our politics is leading – then, as a society, we may begin to rediscover what is best in us. We may also see opportunities for change.