In November 1964, for the first time in their lives, my 84-year-old grandmother and my 61-year-old father voted for a Democrat. Their options were President Lyndon Johnson and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. For them, there was no real choice. I can still hear my grandmother exclaim, “that awful man!” What would she say today?
I have no doubt about her answer; it is mine, except mine is much longer and more acerbic than hers. The question which could not occur to her but does occur to me—so much has changed in six decades—is what is the moral and political kind of the people who follow, support, even worship Trump, given the kind of moral and political kind of person who he is. What does it say about them that they accept him as their leader?
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In his acceptance speech at the Republican Party’s nominating convention, Goldwater famously declared, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” “Remind”? Goldwater’s message is clear: violence is a virtue if exercised in the presumed defense of liberty or freedom. The Declaration of Independence implies as much, as it explains why the colonies were rebelling against an oppressive monarchy. But aside from stressing his period’s strong anticommunism, Goldwater spoke vaguely about threats to liberty or freedom and said nothing about justice or civil rights.
Sixty years later, we face the likely presidential options of President Joseph Biden and former President Donald Trump. The Republican Party seems nearly certain to nominate a presidential candidate who regards violence as a viable, acceptable, perhaps necessary, form of political action. Trump has said that, if court proceedings do not go his way, there will be “mayhem” or “bedlam”; that, if the election goes his way, there will be “retribution”—terms with overtones of violence about whatever he defines as his way at the moment. He has threatened that, if elected, he will use federal power to harass or harm, investigate or imprison, political opponents, and to use government force against other Americans, mostly minorities or non-Republicans, if they demonstrate against his administration’s actions. How his proclivity to violence aligns with liberty, freedom, or justice is a question which Republican politicians and Party members do not ask, likely because they have no answer. But, then, violence has become a part of the Republican Party’s modus operandi.
Some people appalled by the stark division between the political parties caution against regarding members of the opposition as evil. Their advice is naïve. Many Republican legislative policies and governing practices—the list is too long to offer—are harmful to people and the country. Although most elected GOP officeholders may not be violent, many Trump followers are (and some BP, DEA, FBI, and SS agents, military personnel, and state and local police may be). Most of the political violence in this country comes from the Right, whether from Republican-friendly individuals acting on their own or organized militant groups like the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers.
The difference between elected GOP officeholders increasingly anti-democratic and militant, and Party members and others supporting the Party’s drift to autocracy and violence, is small and shrinking. Those already abusive or aggressive by rudeness, name-calling, doxing, swatting, harassing, beating, etc.—all forms of violence—get increasing support from other Republicans and others who believe that violence may be required to right perceived wrongs and to redirect a country seen as going in the wrong direction. In supporting positions which are evil because they are harmful to people, elected GOP officeholders, Party members, and others partake of evil and become evil themselves.
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My father more than once advised me that a person is known by the company he keeps. He would have agreed that the company is known by the person it accepts.
So one question is what kind of company are Republicans and others accepting when they support Trump. The evidence is copious and clear. Anyone reading or listening between the lines of public commentary since Trump declared for the presidency in 2015 knows that many who have been business associates, political colleagues, and social acquaintances regard him in various unflattering terms, all encompassed by one word: trash. The exceptions—among others, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Rudi Giuliani, Paul Manafort, Stephen Miller, Roger Stone—are also trash avoided by respectable people. What used to be known as “polite society” in New York excludes members of Trump’s family. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner self-exiled to Florida because their crowd ostracized them. Trump’s wife, Melania, is a virtual recluse in New York City.
No one has to follow the political news or read the society pages to recognize Trump’s sociopathic character. His psyche is a machine of narcissism trying, out of desperate insecurity, to control the world around him and to fill a void, from a loveless childhood, of insatiable demands for power without moral principle or personal compunction. All his interactions with the world are transactional. He has no friends or pets because he has no empathy or loyalty, no regard for personal boundaries or political limits, no self-control, and no respect for decency, honesty, norms, or the rule of law. He lies and distorts the truth habitually and ceaselessly. His abusive, threatening, bigoted, and vulgar language, his cruel, belittling attacks on critics and others displeasing to him, and his support of violence by police or right-wing mobs are common coin of his public communications. His words and deeds are clear warnings of his political intentions and vivid indications of his character. The man is trash.
The other question is what are Republicans and others like who keep company with—that is, support—Trump in conversation, trolling remarks, media posts, bumper stickers, placards, rallies, and the ballot box. If their words or deeds resemble his, they resemble him. If they extenuate or excuse his conduct, or explain their support—say, by claiming that Biden, Democrats, Progressives, or liberals are worse—, they are trying to whitewash the blackness of Trump’s evil or to claim that Trump is the lesser of two evils. They are no different from him. What he is, they are: trash.
“Trash” is an ugly word to use about anyone, not to mention a former President of the United States, much less his political supporters. But the word befits anyone whose moral values, personal demeanor, and political conduct are debased and undisciplined. Anyone who can hear, see, approve, or imitate how Trump speaks and acts, yet believe him sensible, responsible, respectful, decent, and honorable; or prefer him to any alternative in any major political party, is someone without proper political standards for himself or a president. Only Trump’s kind admires a person, not to mention a former President, who brags about groping women, mocks the physically impaired, disrespects disabled or dead veterans, and insults their families. Only his kind attacks immigrants, LGBTQ+ individuals, Muslims, and Jews, most of whom, like most other Americans, live good lives and harm no one. Only his kind enjoys his humiliating defeated opponents and cruelty toward others. Only his kind supports a person whose fake piety mocks their religion, in the hope that he will support their pseudo-religious positions on abortion and other sex- or gender-related issues. Only his kind resents those easily stereotyped, like New York liberals and Ivy League professors, whom they regard as elitists scornful of them. Only his kind resents that elitists do not look up to them and admire the uncivilized and barbaric speech and conduct which they extol in Trump and exhibit in themselves. Only Trump’s kind, like Trump himself, relishes being trash.
Yet all Republicans are not the same. Like my grandmother and father, some are loyal to the Party because of its traditional positions on small government, low taxes, strong defense, little regulation, etc. Like them, some are loyal to the Party because of a family tradition of Party affiliation. But they were loyal only up to the point at which continued loyalty threatened their integrity and self-respect. Only a lack of integrity and self-respect can prevent Republicans from transcending Party loyalties in the 2024 election for the sake of American democracy. Those who cannot remain in the persisting minority who started with traitors supporting the English monarchy and slavery; who continued with those still supporting slavery and then sustaining white supremacy by the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow laws, and White Citizens’ Councils; and who have remained loyal to the country only as long as they, white racists, could control it and its direction.
However, if they wish to remain Republicans and be good Americans, there is a way: their vote. They have only to vote in secret—they have a secret ballot, after all, and can say what they will outside the voting booth—for Biden and other candidates not aligned with Trump or MAGA in 2024. After supporting Trump’s defeat, they can then change parties, try to restore the Republican Party, or work to supplant it with a new party based on traditional Republican principles and positions. Otherwise, vote for Trump, be trash.
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