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.
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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. (Source)
I think that the health of the country requires the good faith participation of principled conservatives in our political discourse because they offer an essential counterbalance to many of the pathologies of the Liberal Order. But MAGA is bereft of either good faith or principles.
And so for this reason, I think that Wehner is pointing to something that doesn't seem to be an issue that it should be for many Trump supporters on the religious right, which is how their political behaviors are putting them into deep moral jeopardy. The moral red line here is not whether one leans left or right, but in whether one becomes actively and enthusiastically involved in promoting something that is so dark and destructive. Whatever its rationalizations, MAGA is at its heart motivated by anger, resentment, and the need for revenge, and those are never moral justifications for any behavior. So many religious conservatives are so obsessed with pointing out the splinter in the Liberal eye that they don't see the two by four in their own--Discernment of Spirits 101.
If you listen to a guy like Steve Bannon and buy the anger, resentment, and revenge package that he's selling, it's not a matter of having an opinion that reasonable, decent people can agree or disagree about--it's about the state of your soul and the moral jeopardy you are putting it into. That's the point, I think, that Wehner, himself a conservative evangelical Christian, is making here, and it's an important one. Religious fanatics persuade themselves they are doing God's work when in reality they are serving other masters.