Why do people collaborate with people they have before seen as their enemy? What explains a Lindsay Graham or a Ted Cruz or a Nikky Haley? Or perhaps the more interesting question is what explains the motives of those who resist--the Liz Cheneys or Adam Kinzigers? Well, there are so many good reasons to do the wrong thing. Applebaum in an Atlantic article appearing last summer lists them:
- We can use this moment to achieve great things;
- We can protect the country from the president;
- I personally will benefit;
- I must remain close to power;
- LOL nothing matters;
- My side might be flawed but the political opposition is so much worse;
- I am afraid to speak out.
She develops each of these motivations and provides apt examples. I can't think of anything she missed, but my favorite is number five:
LOL nothing matters. Cynicism, nihilism, relativism, amorality, irony, sarcasm, boredom, amusement—these are all reasons to collaborate, and always have been. Marko Martin, a novelist and travel writer who grew up in East Germany, told me that in the 1980s some of the East German bohemia, influenced by then-fashionable French intellectuals, argued that there was no such thing as morality or immorality, no such thing as good or evil, no such thing as right or wrong—“so you might as well collaborate.”
This instinct has an American variation. Politicians here who have spent their lives following rules and watching their words, calibrating their language, giving pious speeches about morality and governance, may feel a sneaking admiration for someone like Trump, who breaks all the rules and gets away with it. He lies; he cheats; he extorts; he refuses to show compassion, sympathy, or empathy; he does not pretend to believe in anything or to abide by any moral code. He simulates patriotism, with flags and gestures, but he does not behave like a patriot; his campaign scrambled to get help from Russia in 2016 (“If it’s what you say, I love it,” replied Donald Trump Jr., when offered Russian “dirt” on Hillary Clinton), and Trump himself called on Russia to hack his opponent. And for some of those at the top of his administration, and of his party, these character traits might have a deep, unacknowledged appeal: If there is no such thing as moral and immoral, then everyone is implicitly released from the need to obey any rules. If the president doesn’t respect the Constitution, then why should I? If the president can cheat in elections, then why can’t I? If the president can sleep with porn stars, then why shouldn’t I?
This, of course, was the insight of the “alt-right,” which understood the dark allure of amorality, open racism, anti-Semitism, and misogyny long before many others in the Republican Party. Mikhail Bakhtin, the Russian philosopher and literary critic, recognized the lure of the forbidden a century ago, writing about the deep appeal of the carnival, a space where everything banned is suddenly allowed, where eccentricity is permitted, where profanity defeats piety. The Trump administration is like that: Nothing means anything, rules don’t matter, and the president is the carnival king.
And number 6 is also particularly apt--
My side might be flawed, but the political opposition is much worse. When Marshal Philippe Pétain, the leader of collaborationist France, took over the Vichy government, he did so in the name of the restoration of a France that he believed had been lost. Pétain had been a fierce critic of the French Republic, and once he was in control, he replaced its famous creed—Liberté, égalité, fraternité, or “Liberty, equality, fraternity”—with a different slogan: Travail, famille, patrie, or “Work, family, fatherland.” Instead of the “false idea of the natural equality of man,” he proposed bringing back “social hierarchy”—order, tradition, and religion. Instead of accepting modernity, Pétain sought to turn back the clock.
By Pétain’s reckoning, collaboration with the Germans was not merely an embarrassing necessity. It was crucial, because it gave patriots the ability to fight the real enemy: the French parliamentarians, socialists, anarchists, Jews, and other assorted leftists and democrats who, he believed, were undermining the nation, robbing it of its vitality, destroying its essence. “Rather Hitler than Blum,” the saying went—Blum having been France’s socialist (and Jewish) prime minister in the late 1930s. One Vichy minister, Pierre Laval, famously declared that he hoped Germany would conquer all of Europe. Otherwise, he asserted, “Bolshevism would tomorrow establish itself everywhere.”
...
The three most important members of Trump’s Cabinet—Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Attorney General William Barr—are all profoundly shaped by Vichyite apocalyptic thinking. All three are clever enough to understand what Trumpism really means, that it has nothing to do with God or faith, that it is self-serving, greedy, and unpatriotic. Nevertheless, a former member of the administration (one of the few who did decide to resign) told me that both Pence and Pompeo “have convinced themselves that they are in a biblical moment.” All of the things they care about—outlawing abortion and same-sex marriage, and (though this is never said out loud) maintaining a white majority in America—are under threat. Time is growing short. They believe that “we are approaching the Rapture, and this is a moment of deep religious significance.” Barr, in a speech at Notre Dame, has also described his belief that “militant secularists” are destroying America, that “irreligion and secular values are being forced on people of faith.” Whatever evil Trump does, whatever he damages or destroys, at least he enables Barr, Pence, and Pompeo to save America from a far worse fate. If you are convinced we are living in the End Times, then anything the president does can be forgiven.
This blog is largely dedicated to a defense of "axiality" in a secular postmodernist milieu. Numbers 5 and 6 in Applebaum's list describe two particularly potent anti-axial factors that are shaping the contemporary postmodern ethos--cynicism and fanaticism.
I have argued that religion isn't going away and that the only real question is whether bad religion or good religion will come to dominate American society. My definition of good religion is one that is based in hope and that frees people to become bigger and more open to the world and its complexity. My definition of a bad religion is one that is based in fear that closes people down and starts making judgments about who's in and who's out. I think it should be clear which category the religiosity of Pence, Pompeo, and Barr fall.
The axial religions from Taoism to Christianity assert that there is an underlying lawfulness or metaphysical foundation that determines what is most deeply real, that there is Deep Truth and Deep Goodness that transcends and "corrects" the codes of customary cultures, which at best crudely approximate this Deep Lawfulness. That there is such a metaphysical foundation is one thing, but the impulse to reduce it in some dogmatic or fundamentalistic way is to make a parody of it. The Logos or Tao is the Deep Real, but we never possess it or grasp it in its entirety. It is a dynamic, enlarging force in history whose impulses must be discerned anew in every generation.
No doubt Pence, Pompeo, and Barr think they are doing that, so who am I to say that they're wrong? Well, by their fruits you will know them, and January 6 reveals Trumpism for what it has always been. More than anything else it represents the fruit of Trump collaborationism. It was an exercise in fanatical delusion and mob violence, and you'd think that Mike Pence, among the three might have learned that when the crowd chanted to hang him. But I doubt it. See number 3 and 4 above. If Pence, Pompeo, or Barr are truly men of faith, they have yet to show any signs of it. They are just run-of-the-mill religious fanatics.