We’re Living in a Failed Moral State
By: Dr. Thomas J. West Iii
Tags: Politics, Child Separation, Society, Morality, Trump

We’re Living in a Failed Moral State

The two defining tragedies of the Trump age — family separation and the disastrous pandemic response — show how far America’s moral authority has fallen.

There’s been quite a lot of chatter recently about how Americans are living in a failed state. It’s not hard to see why. In addition to completely botching the response to the pandemic — with the result that we’re now seeing over 200,000 infections and nearly 3,000 deaths a day — it’s recently been revealed that Russia was able to hack into various federal agencies. While we don’t yet know the extent of the damage, it’s pretty staggering that such a thing was even possible, and even more so that there doesn’t seem, as of yet, to be a concerted response to it (certainly not from Trump, who’s far too busy ranting and spewing lies about the election to pay close attention to a lowly matter like a hostile foreign power’s cyberattacks).

It seems equally important, to me at least, to recognize that we are also living in a failed moral state, both in the sense that the United States under Trump has become a profoundly, one might even say proudly, immoral nation and in the sense that, as a collective, we seem to have lost any sense of moral purpose. Though I am of course not ignorant of the fact that the US has perpetrated many horrendous crimes during the course of its long history, I’m one of those who believes that, at the very least, we have always sought to become better, that at our best we truly could become the better angels of our nature. We may not have always agreed about the best way to go about it, but at least we seemed to agree that there was a moral code that we ought to follow to the best of our abilities.

However, the two great crises of the Trump Era have shaken my belief. One is, of course, the pandemic and Trump’s objectively disastrous handling of it. The other is the equally disastrous child separation policy of 2018, a humanitarian disaster whose full contours and effects will, no doubt, only be completely illuminated in the harsh light of history.

In his new book, Separated: Inside an American Tragedy, journalist Jacob Soboroff gives a detailed history of that policy. His account is a haunting and sober reminder of what transpired two years ago, and for that reason alone it needs to be required reading for everyone. Furthermore, as I was reading it, I was struck by how many parallels there were between that atrocious and ill-advised policy and the federal response to the pandemic. Both times, Trump and his government tried to cover up the true extent of the problem, often by denying that there was a problem at all. Both times, it was the work of journalists that helped the public to be aware of the scale of the crisis. And both times Trump showed his absolute inability to assume a position of moral authority and leadership, no matter how many times he was presented with the opportunity to do so. In fact, both times both the president and members of the GOP showed themselves remarkably callous — at times infuriatingly so — to the suffering of others.

At the same time, I was also dismayed about how quickly child separations faded from public view, even as they were still going on. More to the point, I’m also horrified that Trump came within a stone’s throw of winning re-election this year, winning the second-most number of votes of any candidate in history (Biden being first). How is it possible, I ask myself, that so many of my fellow Americans would be willing to forget about what he had done to those children, inflicting needless (and probably permanent) trauma on them just so that he could fulfill his xenophobic campaign promise to be tough on immigration? How could they still vote for this man, even though he literally put children in cages? How could they still call themselves bastions of morality — which the American right, particularly evangelicals simply love to do — while ignoring and brushing under the rug the heartbreaking cries of children separated from their parents?

After all, it’s not as if there haven’t been periodic reminders of the horror show that unfolded in 2018. The issue even came up at one of the debates between Trump and Biden, when it was revealed that the federal government — Trump’s federal government — might not be able to reunite over 500 children with their parents. Not that Trump showed any remorse; he is, after all, a man who refuses to apologize for literally anything.

I also can’t help but wonder how it is that so many people could still vote for a man, even knowing how badly he mangled the pandemic response. More sinisterly, I also can’t help but fear that the pandemic, as horrible as it was and is, will all too soon fade from our collective memory. We’ve become so inured to outrage, it seems to me, that within a year most will have moved on, and few moral lessons will be learned. It’s almost certain that Trump hasn’t learned anything, and it’s just fortunate for all of us that he will no longer be in charge come January 20.

This sad state of moral affairs is, unfortunately, what happens when you elect a man who, in his entire life in the public eye, has never shown that he has even the slightest bit of compassion or empathy to offer. To anyone. Even his own family. Though evangelicals might like to worship at the altar of Trump and remain one of his most steadfast groups of supporters, the truth is that he is one of the most amoral men that have ever occupied the Oval Office. And, as James Poniewozik noted in his book Audience of One, Trump really doesn’t seem to see people as people. He fundamentally sees them as assets, as tools to be used and then discarded when their purpose is fulfilled. Clearly, many of his supporters feel the same way.

Is this who we are as America? Is this really what we expect of our elected leaders, this turning a blind eye to the suffering of children, this throwing of the elderly and the disabled to the ravages of COVID-19, this total abrogation of even the pretense of moral authority? Surely, I say to myself, we are better than this, or at least we should try to be.

There is hope on the horizon, of course, now that Biden is poised to take office . Whether one agrees with all of his policy positions of his Cabinet choices or not, there’s no question that he’s a man motivated by a deep sense of personal morality. A lot of this stems from his well-documented personal losses — first his wife and daughter in a car accident, then his son Beau to brain cancer. As a result, he has profound empathy for the suffering of others, and this in turn allows him to have a moral compass that Trump simply cannot and does not have.

I truly hope that Biden can move us back into a more moral age, in which we can once again assume that America is a nation of morals. Given that Republicans are, even as I write this, still planning on protesting Biden’s win on January 6, I don’t have much hope.