I guess that the thing we need to kick around today is the murder of two people in Minneapolis on Saturday, during the national, anti-racist ‘No Kings Day’.
One of the murdered and one of the shot-but-still alive people were Minnesota state legislators. The other two people were non-serving spouses. Killed were Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark. Wounded were State Senator John A. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette.
The shooter had a notebook in his vehicle that mentioned about 70 potential targets, some in neighboring states, that included politicians, civic and business leaders, and Planned Parenthood centers.
The shooter was registered is an unaffiliated voter. But according to his roommate, he had voted for Trump. And according to Governor Tim Walz the shootings were “politically motivated.” MN Senator Amy Klobuchar echoed Governor Walz: “The shootings were politically motivated, and there clearly was some throughline with abortion because of the groups that were on the list.”
Today is the 10th anniversary of when Donald Trump descended his golden escalator, announced his presidential candidacy, and promptly got into the meat and the one constant of his campaign – racism- when he declared that “Mexico was sending people who were bringing crime, drugs, and ‘rapists’ to the United States. They're not sending their best. Some, I assume, are good people."
He went a little further after the “Unite The Right” rally in opposition of the removal of a statue in honor of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville VA . “There are very fine people on both sides.” No ambiguous wording there. No “…I assume”. The rally, on August 11th and 12th, 2017 included members of the alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and far-right militias. Some groups chanted racist and antisemitic slogans and carried weapons, Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols, the valknut, Confederate battle flags, Deus vult crosses, flags, and other symbols of various past and present antisemitic and anti-Islamic groups.
The rally killed Heather Heyer.
Ten years ago today, so it seems like a valid question to ask: “Are you better off today than you were ten years ago?” And it seems like today is also a good day to re-run a piece I ran one year ago come Friday wondering who the followers are of Donald John Trump.
When I started writing these posts in late 2020, I promised myself that they would not be political and that I would not be calling out specific politicians or either of the two major parties. But I’m concerned about our country and more concerned every day. America now has three major parties - Republican, Democrat, and MAGA. The MAGA party is controlled by the iron fist of a mean-spirited, selfish, authoritarian who cares about only himself, not a smidge about the country, and admires other strongmen leaders such as Victor Orbán of Hungry and Vladimir Putin of Russia.
I’m worried for America. Admittedly, I’m not the most patriotic person in the country. But if need be, I could play one on television. In Vietnam as a Marine Corps helicopter gunner I was awarded the Air Medal and the Combat Air Wings. They’re not the most whoop-dee-doo of all medals. They’re not a Bronze Star or a Medal of honor. But they do mean the awardee saw significant combat from the air.
As a National Park Service Ranger I spent my years protecting public lands. And now, as a Civil Conversationalist, I work and write to protect our democracy from those who would use race as a wedge to see it destroyed and remade in their likeness. So I must have some patriotism left in me. Republicans (actualRepublicans) and Democrats, despite their deep differences and visions, are both for America. The MAGA party, on the other hand, is for Donald Trump and nothing else. I do not understand his appeal. And I’m afraid. He has not been bashful in saying that he will terminate American democracy if he returns to the White House. When someone tells you who they are, believe them.
Today I’m publishing a piece by Peter Wehner.Wehner is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum. Wehner, who is White, devotes 6 paragraphs to Trump’s racism, so it’s related to the mission of The Civil Conversations Project. I had (key word there…had) White friends who voted for Trump - both times. When I asked them about his racism, their universal response was, “ I didn’t know” and/or “I just didn’t think it was that important.”
Didn’t know…not Important.Trump was placed under a U.S. Department of Justice consent decree for refusing to rent any of his NYC apartments to Black renters. Was that a not a big deal? Not important? He had thirteen thousand apartments. Not 13. Not even 13 hundred. Thirteen thousand! How could you not know, unless you voted for a person that you hadn’t bothered to figure out who you were voting for?
Like you, I’ve spent a ton of my time trying to figure out why otherwise good and decent people would have anything at all to do with Trump, let alone worship him. I read this opinion piece a couple of days ago that I’m publishing today. I’m not sure that this piece by Peter Wehner answers that question. But he asks it more eloquently and passionately than I. And he made me think.
A special request. Please pass this post on to your moderate right friends. We are all in this together. .
Supporters of Donald Trump gather along the route from Mar-a-Lago, his club and residence, to the Palm Beach Airport, in West Palm Beach, Florida, on April 3, 2023. (Damon Winter / The New York Times / Redux)
On the morning of August 8, 2022, 30 FBI agents and two federal prosecutors conducted a court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, estate. The reason for the search, according to a 38-count indictment, was that after leaving office Trump mishandled classified documents, including some involving sensitive nuclear programs, and then obstructed the government’s efforts to reclaim them.
On the day before the FBI obtained the search warrant, one of the agents on the case sent an email to his bosses, according to The New York Times. “The F.B.I. intends for the execution of the warrant to be handled in a professional, low key manner,” he wrote, “and to be mindful of the optics of the search.” It was, and they were.
Over the course of 10 hours, the Times reported, “there was little drama as [agents] hauled away a trove of boxes containing highly sensitive state secrets in three vans and a rented Ryder box truck.”
On the day of the search, Trump was out of the state. The club at Mar-a-Lago was closed. Agents alerted one of Trump’s lawyers in advance of the search. And before the search, the FBI communicated with the Secret Service “to make sure we could get into Mar-a-Lago with no issues,” according to the testimony of former Assistant FBI Director Steven D’Antuono. It wasn’t a “show of force,” he said. “I was adamant about that, and that was something we all agreed on.”
The search warrant itself included a standard statement from the Department of Justice’s policy on the use of deadly force. There was nothing exceptional about it. But that didn’t prevent Trump or his supporters from claiming that President Joe Biden and federal law-enforcement agents had been involved in a plot to assassinate the former president.
In a fundraising appeal, Trump wrote,
BIDEN’S DOJ WAS AUTHORIZED TO SHOOT ME! It’s just been revealed that Biden’s DOJ was authorized to use DEADLY FORCE for their DESPICABLE raid in Mar-a-Lago. You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable … Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.
On May 23, Trump publicly claimed that the Department of Justice “authorized the use of ‘deadly force’ in their Illegal, UnConstitutional, and Un-American RAID of Mar-a-Lago, and that would include against our Great Secret Service, who they thought might be ‘in the line of fire.’”
Trump supporters echoed those claims, as he knew they would. Steve Bannon, one of the architects of the MAGA movement, said, “This was an attempted assassination attempt on Donald John Trump or people associated with him. They wanted a gunfight.” Right-wing radio hosts stoked one another’s fury, claiming that there’s nothing Trump critics won’t do to stop him, up to and including attempting to assassinate him and putting the lives of his Secret Service detail in danger.
The statement by Trump went beyond inflaming his supporters; it created a mindset that moved them closer to violence, the very same mindset that led thousands of them to attack the Capitol on January 6 and threaten to hang Vice President Mike Pence. Which is why Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a motion asking the judge overseeing Trump’s classified-documents case to block him from making public statements that could put law enforcement in danger. “Those deceptive and inflammatory assertions irresponsibly put a target on the backs of the FBI agents involved in this case, as Trump well knows,” he wrote.
Motivated ignorance refers to willfully blinding oneself to facts. It’s choosing not to know. In many cases, for many people, knowing the truth is simply too costly, too psychologically painful, too threatening to their core identity. Nescience is therefore incentivized; people actively decide to remain in a state of ignorance. If they are presented with strong arguments against a position they hold, or compelling evidence that disproves the narrative they embrace, they will reject them. Doing so fends off the psychological distress of the realization that they’ve been lying to themselves and to others.
Motivated ignorance is a widespread phenomenon; most people, to one degree or another, employ it. What matters is the degree to which one embraces it, and the consequences of doing so. In the case of MAGA world, the lies that Trump supporters believe, or say they believe, are obviously untrue and obviously destructive. Since 2016 there’s been a ratchet effect, each conspiracy theory getting more preposterous and more malicious. Things that Trump supporters wouldn’t believe or accept in the past have since become loyalty tests. Election denialism is one example. The claim that Trump is the target of “lawfare,” victim to the weaponization of the justice system, is another.
I have struggled to understand how to view individuals who have not just voted for Trump but who celebrate him, who don’t merely tolerate him but who constantly defend his lawlessness and undisguised cruelty. How should I think about people who, in other domains of their lives, are admirable human beings and yet provide oxygen to his malicious movement? How complicit are people who live in an epistemic hall of mirrors and have sincerely—or half-sincerely—convinced themselves they are on the side of the angels?
Throughout my career I’ve tried to resist the temptation to make unwarranted judgments about the character of people based on their political views. For one thing, it’s quite possible my views on politics are misguided or distorted, so I exercise a degree of humility in assessing the views of others. For another, I know full well that politics forms only a part of our lives, and not the most important part. People can be personally upstanding and still be wrong on politics.
But something has changed for me in the Trump era. I struggle more than I once did to wall off a person’s character from their politics when their politics is binding them to an unusually—and I would say undeniably—destructive person. The lies that MAGA world parrots are so manifestly untrue, and the Trump ethic is so manifestly cruel, that they are difficult to set aside.
If a person insists, despite the overwhelming evidence, that Trump was the target of an assassination plot hatched by Biden and carried out by the FBI, this is more than an intellectual failure; it is a moral failure, and a serious one at that. It’s only reasonable to conclude that such Trump supporters have not made a good-faith effort to understand what is really and truly happening. They are choosing to live within the lie, to invoke the words of the former Czech dissident and playwright Vaclav Havel.
One of the criteria that need to be taken into account in assessing the moral culpability of people is how absurd the lies are that they are espousing; a second is how intentionally they are avoiding evidence that exposes the lies because they are deeply invested in the lie; and a third is is how consequential the lie is.
It’s one thing to embrace a conspiracy theory that is relevant only to you and your tiny corner of the world. It’s an entirely different matter if the falsehood you’re embracing and promoting is venomous, harming others, and eroding cherished principles, promoting violence and subverting American democracy.
Among those in attendance was Albert Garner, a Baptist minister from Florida, who told Kennedy that many southern white Christians held “strong moral convictions” on racial integration. It was, according to Garner, “against the will of their Creator.”
“Segregation is a principle of the Old Testament,” Garner said, adding, “Prior to this century neither Christianity nor any denomination of it ever accepted the integration philosophy.”
Two months later, in Hanahan, South Carolina, members of a Southern Baptist church—they described themselves as “Christ centered” and “Bible believing”—voted to take a firm stand against civil-rights legislation.
“The Hanahan Baptists were not alone,” according to Hawkins. “Across the South, white Christians thought the president was flaunting Christian orthodoxy in pursuing his civil rights agenda.” Kennedy “simply could not comprehend the truth Garner was communicating that based on their religious beliefs, southern white Christians thought integration was evil.”
A decade earlier, the Reverend Carey Daniel, pastor of First Baptist Church in West Dallas, Texas, had delivered a sermon titled “God the Original Segregationist,” in response to the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. It became influential within pro-segregationist southern states. Daniel later became president of the Central Texas Division of the Citizens Council of America for Segregation, which asked for a boycott of all businesses, lunch counters included, that served Black patrons. In 1960, Daniel attacked those “trying to destroy the white South by breaking the color line, thus giving aid and comfort to our Communist enemies.”
Now ask yourself this: Did the fierce advocacy on behalf of segregation, and the dehumanization of Black Americans, reflect in any meaningful way on the character of those who advanced such views, even if, say, they volunteered once a month at a homeless shelter and wrote a popular commentary on the Book of Romans?
Readers can decide whether MAGA supporters are better or worse than Albert Garner and Carey Daniel. My point is that all of us believe there’s some place on the continuum in which the political choices we make reflect on our character. Some movements are overt and malignant enough that to willingly be a part of them becomes ethically problematic.
This doesn’t mean those in MAGA world can’t be impressive people in other domains of life, just like critics of Trump may act reprehensibly in their personal lives and at their jobs. I’ve never argued, and I wouldn’t argue today, that politics tells us the most important things about a person’s life. Trump supporters and Trump critics alike can brighten the lives of others, encourage those who are suffering, and demonstrate moments of kindness and grandeur.
I understand, too, if their moral convictions keep them from voting for Joe Biden.
But it would be an affectation for me, at least, to pretend that in this particular circumstance otherwise good people, in joining the MAGA movement, in actively advocating on its behalf, and in planning to cast a vote for Trump, haven’t—given all we know—done something grievously wrong.
Some of them are cynical and know better; others are blind to the cultlike world to which they belong. Still others have convinced themselves that Trump, although flawed, is the best of bad options. It’s a “binary choice,” they say, and so they have talked themselves into supporting arguably the most comprehensively corrupt man in the history of American politics, certainly in presidential politics.
Whichever justification applies, they are giving not just their vote but their allegiance to a man and movement that have done great harm to our country and its ideals, and which seek to inflict even deeper wounds in the years ahead. Many of them are self-proclaimed evangelicals and fundamentalists, and they are also doing inestimable damage to the Christian faith they claim is central to their lives. That collaboration needs to be named. A generation from now, and probably sooner, it will be obvious to everyone that Trump supporters can’t claim they didn’t know.
If you are interested in following along with Canada's resistance to Trump I highly recommend following Charlie Angus. He's up punk musician who became an NDP politician for 21 years and just retired this year. This is his current project:
Also this:
https://open.substack.com/pub/paulwells/p/o-beautiful?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=7ov7m
If you are interested in following along with Canada's resistance to Trump I highly recommend following Charlie Angus. He's up punk musician who became an NDP politician for 21 years and just retired this year. This is his current project:
https://open.substack.com/pub/charlieangus?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=7ov7m