The party of evil

Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor in chief of the Atlantic, and a classic establishment media figure. He’s the kind of person who would be horrified by the argument that all the seeds of Trumpism were germinating under the Republican party of Reagan and the Bushes and The Heroic John McCain and the Fundamentally Decent Mitt Romney.

Still, anti-fascism in America by necessity needs to be a big tent, and we need centrist squishes like Goldberg just as much if not more than clear-eyed warriors like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC for president by the way). So when he describes Donald Trump’s reign of evil with both remarkable economy and none of the temporizing to which the genus reactionary centrism is so prone, it’s worth noting and quoting:

Trump has dismantled America’s foreign-aid infrastructure and gutted a program, built by an earlier Republican president, that saved the lives of Africans infected with HIV; he has encouraged the United States military to commit war crimes; he has instituted radical cuts to U.S. science and medical funding and abetted a crusade against vaccines; he has appointed conspiracists, alcoholics, and idiots to key positions in his administration; he has destroyed the independence of the Justice Department; he has waged pitiless war on prosecutors, FBI agents, and others who previously investigated him, his family, and his friends; he has cast near-fatal doubt on America’s willingness to fulfill its treaty obligations to its democratic allies; he has applauded Vladimir Putin for his barbarism and castigated Ukraine for its unwillingness to commit suicide; he has led racist attacks on various groups of immigrants; he has employed unusually cruel tactics in pursuit of undocumented immigrants, most of whom have committed only one crime—illegally seeking refuge in a country that they believed represented the dream of a better life. Those are some of the actions Trump has taken. Here are a few of the things he has said since returning to office: He has referred to immigrants as “garbage”; he has called a female reporter “piggy” and other reporters “ugly,” “stupid,” “terrible,” and “nasty”; he has suggested that the murder of a Saudi journalist by his country’s government was justified; he has labeled a sitting governor “seriously retarded”; he has blamed the murder of Rob Reiner on the director’s anti-Trump politics; he has called the Democrats the party of “evil.”

This is excellent on the whole, although I can’t help but notice the professional deformation that impels high status journalists to consider the president’s public insulting of other high status journalists to be the sort of infamous act that merits a specific mention among Trump’s countless crimes. both literal and metaphorical.

Goldberg goes on to make an important point about Trump’s fundamental indecency as a human being:

Yet, even when weighed against this stunning record of degeneracy, the pardoning by Trump of his cop-beating foot soldiers represents the lowest moment of this presidency so far, because it was an act not only of naked despotism but also of outlandish hypocrisy. By pardoning these criminals, he exposed a foundational lie of MAGA ideology: that it stands with the police and as a guarantor of law and order. The truth is the opposite.

The power to pardon is a vestige of America’s pre-independence past. It is an unchecked monarchical power, an awesome power, and therefore it should be bestowed only on leaders blessed with self-restraint, civic-mindedness, and, most important, basic decency.

We have been watching indecency triumph in the public sphere on and off for more than 10 years now, since the moment Trump insulted John McCain’s war record. For reasons that are quite possibly too unbearable to contemplate, a large group of American voters was not repulsed by such slander—they were actually aroused by it—and our politics have not been the same. Much has been said, including by me, about Trump’s narcissism, his autocratic inclinations, his disconnection from reality, but not nearly enough has been said about his fundamental indecency, the characteristic that undergirds everything he says and does.

Again, all true, but what follows from this as a political matter, and more specifically as a matter of personal political obligation?

I would say the following: Donald Trump is as utterly indecent as a child pornographer, and the appropriate way to deal with a child pornographer until the legal system imprisons him is to shun not only him, but anyone who, knowing him for what he is, doesn’t treat him as simply beyond the pale.

And right now that category includes not only Trump and his various minions and henchmen, but ALL Republican politicians, and ALL Republican voters. The reason Trump calling Democrats “the party of evil” is part of Goldberg’s indictment of the man is because it’s not true. (This, needless to say, is not some sort of carte blanche defense of that very flawed institution). But here’s the thing I suspect that even at this very late date Goldberg et al would not sign onto: The Republican party, in its current incarnation as a fascist cult of personality, which is quite literally and without any hyperbole what it has become in the America of the year 2026, is absolutely the party of evil, full stop.

There is no “on the other hand” with a child pornographer. There is no on the other hand with Donald Trump. Nor, at this point, with anyone who serves, enables, or supports him.