George Segal, “Rush Hour” 1983
On this Friday, January 20th, 2017, the unthinkable will happen. Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts will administer the oath of office making billionaire reality TV star Donald J. Trump the 45th President of the United States of America. This is a prospect that many in the world (myself included) have been dreading since Trump’s surprise election win on November 8th. Since the election, however, efforts to deflect the American Republic’s seemingly inexorable march towards its own demise have failed. Jill Stein’s recount effort failed. Lobbying the Electoral College to align with the will of the democratic majority failed. Investigations of electoral fraud fueled by accusations of Russian election hacking have failed.
Having failed to stop Mr. Trump from becoming President, we now find ourselves at the crossroads. By ‘the crossroads’ I mean a major intersection where one has to make an important choice as to which path to take. By ‘we’ I mean each of us who is sober enough to be gravely concerned about all of the dangers that a Trump presidency portends. I’m referring here to “Trumpism”, America’s version of the nativist populism arising all over the world. If there was any doubt before the election that Mr. Trump is a manipulative serial liar, race-baiter, kleptocrat and aspiring authoritarian, since that time he’s demonstrated–quite proudly in fact–that he is all of these things and worse.
The choice we face at the crossroads is between the following options:
- We agree to accept the Trump presidency and try to work with him in an attempt to make the best of a bad situation. We compromise for the good of the American people, at least in those areas where we can find common ground.
- We refuse to compromise. We refuse to even acknowledge the legitimacy of a Trump presidency. We resist.
In what follows I’m going to make the case for option 2. I think it’s imperative that you don’t compromise. You should resist. I won’t be making this case by appeal to political pragmatism, tactics, or expediency. I’ll be making this case on moral grounds. The liberal-democratic world established by the spirits of 1776 and 1789 is under formidable existential threat–as is the free and open society it makes possible. We are heading into dark times. Under such conditions your moral resistance may be required for your survival as a decent person. And the world needs decent persons like you right now, lest the light be swallowed completely in darkness.
Consideration for the Choice of Compromise
If the options I’ve described above both carry a certain appeal, it’s because both are positions that a decent person with good intentions could occupy. And indeed, since the election many people with good intentions have aligned themselves in both camps.
Regarding Option 1 (compromise), on the day after the election Nicholas Kristof wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times entitled Gritting Our Teeth and Giving President Trump a Chance. Kristof is not a Trump fan. He mentions with concern Trump’s climate change denial, his flirtations with white supremacists, and his promises of mass deportations and unconstitutional religious tests. Yet despite these deeply disturbing issues, Kristof writes, “[L]like it or not, we Americans have a new president-elect, and it’s time to buck up.” Appealing to our democratic values of compromise and fair play, Kristof argues that the Republican Party’s eight year effort to make President Obama fail was “disgraceful,” and certainly not something we should emulate even now. We can afford to offer the benefit of the doubt because “our institutions are stronger than one man. We are not Weimar Germany.”
Several prominent Democratic Party lawmakers have struck a tone similar to Kristof’s. On the day after the election, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi indicated a willingness to work with President Trump on infrastructure projects. In Pelosi’s view, the fact that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote undermines any pretension of a Republican mandate. Instead, she insists that both parties will be forced “to come together and find common ground.” And also on the day after the election, Senator Bernie Sanders stated, “To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him,”
Finally, it is also important to note President Obama’s remarks on the occasion of meeting with Donald Trump at the White House on November 10th. Embracing the essential republican tradition of a peaceful transfer of power, President Obama remarked, “Most of all, I want to emphasize to you, Mr. President-elect, that we now are going to want to do everything we can to help you succeed–because if you succeed, then the country succeeds.”
While we cannot plumb the depths of their hearts to know their true intentions, there is little reason to doubt that these generous offers of compromise were offered with good intentions, and in a spirit of good will.
Consideration for the Choice of Resistance
In juxtaposition to these pleas for compromise, let’s consider a few dissenting voices in defense of option 2 (resistance).
On November 27th, in an article in Slate Magazine entitled Keep Hope Alive, Jamelle Bouie takes Senator Bernie Sanders to task for his stated willingness to work with Trump on the condition that he sincerely offers plans that will help working class people. “A working-class politics that leaves black and brown workers vulnerable to white nationalism isn’t a working-class politics,” Bouie argues. “It’s a white politics for white workers and counterproductive to broad advancement.”
In an even more uncompromising tone, political activist and organizer Kali Akuno emphatically states, “We cannot and should not legitimize the transfer of authority to a right-wing populist who has neo-fascist orientations. We shouldn’t legitimize that rule in any form or fashion. We need to build a program of being ungovernable.”
On November 13th, in an interview for an Austrian television program, commenting on President Obama’s assertion that we need to work to help President-Elect Trump succeed, because if Trump succeeds, the country succeeds, Austrian-German actor Christoph Waltz remarked with alarm, “Really? If Trump is successful, with what he announced during his campaign, it’s the end of the line.” The announcements Waltz was referring to include: advocating the use of torture, advocating the tactical use of nuclear weapons, and accusing Mexicans of being rapists and drug dealers.
We cannot and should not legitimize the transfer of authority to a right-wing populist who has neo-fascist orientations. We need to build a program of being ungovernable.”
Finally, on November 10th, Russian-American journalist, LGBTQ activist, and staunch Vladimir Putin critic Masha Gessen published an essay entitled, Autocracy: Rules for Survival. Rule #5 of Gessen’s six rules states unequivocally, Don’t make compromises. “Nongovernmental organizations, many of which are reeling at the moment, faced with a transition period in which there is no opening for their input, will grasp at chances to work with the new administration,” Gessen writes. “This will be fruitless—damage cannot be minimized, much less reversed, when mobilization is the goal—but worse, it will be soul-destroying.”
If the voices advocating compromise reflect a well-intentioned desire to contribute to the common good in troubled times, the voices advocating resistance suggest a sense of moral urgency. They speak as though those who advocate compromise are missing something, as though they’re failing to recognize the gravity of the situation. This insight is correct, and Masha Gessen’s six Rules for Survival provide us with a key to begin to understand why.
As a Russian, a Jew, and a lesbian activist, Gessen has ample personal experience and family history with life under authoritarian rule, spanning from the holocaust, through Stalin’s totalitarian rule, to her own experiences as a gay rights activist in Putin’s Russia. She’s not about to fool around with generous offers of the benefit of the doubt and seeking common ground. Heeding her own first rule of survival–Believe the Autocrat–she takes Donald Trump deadly seriously.
Political Pragmatism and Autocracy
Viewed through the lens of Masha Gessen’s six rules, those well-intentioned people who choose to compromise with the Trump Administration appear to be guilty of underestimation. How true this is remains to be seen. Nevertheless, they clearly assume that Mr. Trump doesn’t really mean many of the terrible things he says (i.e., they don’t follow rule #1: Believe the autocrat), and they have a strong faith that our democratic institutions are, as Nicholas Kristof put it, “stronger than one man” (i.e., they don’t adhere to rule #3; Institutions will not save you). If this is the case, it’s due in large part to a lack of political imagination. Americans live in a 240 year old democratic republic. Democratic norms and traditions are well ingrained. Most Americans have no personal experience living under an autocrat. To many Americans, republican institutions seem unassailable. In this context, it’s not surprising that the first option I mentioned, the choice of compromise, is appealing.
Option 1 (compromise) is the clear choice of the political pragmatist living in a democratic republic. A political pragmatist is a realist, a grown up. She realizes that she can’t always have things her way. She has to negotiate and compromise to get what she wants. Sometimes she gets her way, and sometimes she doesn’t. The “art of compromise” is a political virtue in a representative democracy. It’s how modern democracies like ours are supposed to function.
For a political pragmatist, option 2 (resistance) looks like political idealism. It’s unappealing to the political pragmatist because–you guessed it–it’s unrealistic. Idealists won’t compromise. They insist that the world ought to be a certain way rather than accepting the world as it actually is.
In a well functioning democratic republic, with legitimate actors acting in good faith, the political pragmatist’s view has a lot of merit. However, outside of a functioning democratic republic, under threat of an autocrat acting in dubious faith, the political pragmatist is woefully mistaken. Under these conditions, option 1 (compromise) is a trap that threatens to destroy the goodness of decent people. Option 2 (resist) under these conditions is the choice of the moral resister–the person of good will who refuses to compromise when it comes to human decency.
As Trump torpedoes into the presidency, we need to shift from realist to moral reasoning.”
This latter point–that the situation, and therefore the appropriate choice–is different when we find ourselves confronted with autocracy, is the point Masha Gessen wants us to understand. She makes this clear in a follow up piece to her essay Autocracy: Rules for Survival entitled Trump: The Choice we Face, by insisting, “As Trump torpedoes into the presidency, we need to shift from realist to moral reasoning.”
Masha Gessen and the Traps of Political Pragmatism
In her book A Philosophy of Morals, philosopher Agnes Heller describes two traps that threaten to compromise the goodness of decent persons under conditions of authoritarianism. Both are justifications falling under the choice of compromise. The first trap is captured by the following declaration: “I would co-operate with the Devil himself if human lives could be saved.” The second goes as follows: “One can change these institutions only from within. Once I am within the institution, I will contribute to change, while those who remain outside in order to preserve their empty morality will be politically impotent and sterile.”
The reason that it’s so tempting for decent persons to fall into these traps, Heller tells us, is because “ these are genuinely moral arguments.” They’re driven by a genuine desire to take practical action for the good. The problem with them is that in each case the justification is utilitarian in nature. Or to use Masha Gessen’s language, they’re justified under the auspice of realism, which assumes a political world ruled “not by morality, but by clear and calculable interests” and where “alliances and conflicts turn into transactions with predictable outcomes.”
“Once utilitarian justification has been accepted as a substitute for justification through norms, principles of moral orientation and maxims,” Heller warns, “one is bound to subscribe to a utilitarian moral philosophy in full.” That is to say, under authoritarian conditions, once we allow the calculus of political pragmatism to stand in for our moral principles, it’s difficult to avoid the slide towards total compromise of those moral principles.
At stake, in the extreme case, is the destruction of the decent individual’s moral personality, or what Hannah Arendt describes in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism as “the murder of the moral person.” However, even in cases of moral compromise less extreme, the result can be devastating.
Astonishingly, Masha Gessen bravely illustrates this point by appealing to her personal and family history–her great-grandfather’s role as a member of the Judenrat in the ghetto in Bialystok, Poland; her grandmother’s role as a censor for the Soviet government, and even her own role as editor-in-chief of a science magazine in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Gessen’s story of her great-grandfather, whom she views “as a deeply moral man,” is particularly poignant. Likely for pragmatic reasons we’ve already discussed, Gessen’s great-grandfather joined the Judenrat in an attempt to do something to try to save the lives of some of the ghetto inhabitants The Judenrat was the Nazi-appointed Jewish council that ran the ghetto. In the end, Gessen writes, there is every reason to believe that he participated in “compiling the lists of Jews to be ‘liquidated.” We see in this instance how the second of the two traps Agnes Heller describes is sprung. One agrees to participate in a morally compromised institution from within in the hopes of doing good from the inside (as Gessen describes the rationale, “If I don’t do the job, someone will”). Once inside one is coerced into doing the unthinkable.
The Crossroads Revisited
At the beginning of this post I made the claim that in facing Trump’s Inauguration as President of the United States we find ourselves at the crossroads. I also described what I meant by the crossroads: a major intersection where one has to make an important choice as to which path to take. At this point I’d like to note that I am aware that in America, in the lore of Mississippi delta blues, the crossroads carries another deeper, spiritual meaning–one with echos of Faust. The crossroads is where, according to legend, Robert Johnson meets the devil at midnight and chooses to sell his soul in exchange for the gift of musical genius.
I’m not opposed to this other meaning, although I would insist upon a caveat. The devil that Faust and Robert Johnson encounter is a reliable contractarian. He’s the kind of devil you can do good deals with. In trade for his soul, Faust gets magical powers. In trade for his soul, Johnson becomes a guitar legend. We cannot expect the same respect for contracts when dealing with the devils of white nationalism, authoritarianism, and kleptocracy. We shouldn’t expect, for example, that in trade for the soul of America plenty of good paying manufacturing jobs are coming back.
I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees.
I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees.
Asked the Lord above “have mercy, now save poor Bob, if you please.”–Robert Johnson
What I like about this alternative meaning of the crossroads is the sense in which it evokes a very serious and significant existential choice. At this crossroads one is faced with the choice of selling one’s soul to the Devil in exchange for something one strongly desires. It is also reminiscent of one of the two traps that Agnes Heller warns us lies in waiting for the well-intentioned political pragmatist: “I would co-operate with the Devil himself if human lives could be saved.” In this regard, I offer this second, Mississippi delta blues reading of the crossroads, not as something we should embrace, but rather as a cautionary parable of choosing compromise under the threat of autocracy.
I do, however, want to discuss making an existential choice at the crossroads. Not an existential choice that entails the selling of one’s soul, but an existential choice more akin to claiming one’s soul for one’s own. That is to say, I want to discuss what it means to be a moral resister in dark times.
How to Be a Moral Resister
At the end of Francis Ford Coppola’s classic film The Godfather, Michael Corleone manages to pull off a coup after his family is nearly destroyed. In a carefully orchestrated attack, he has the heads of the five New York crime families assassinated. When the Corleone crew come for Don Tessio, Tessio says to Corleone family consigliere Tom Hagan, “Tell Mike it was only business. I always liked him.”
This is instructive in the sense that The Godfather is often described as an allegory for American capitalism. If this is true, then it paints an extremely cynical view of the world of business. Here business is driven by cold, self-interested calculation, profit seeking, and the merciless imperatives of the bottom line. It’s a morality-free zone (no hard feelings, it was only business). Based on the way he talks and behaves, this is how billionaire businessman Donald Trump views the world, and this is the world Donald Trump promises to bring into politics. Or to make a similar point, it is not uncommon to hear Russia under Vladimir Putin’s autocratic rule described as a mafia state. If we attempt to imagine what Trump’s autocratic kleptocracy would look like, this is a suitable exemplar.
This paints a rather clear picture of why the political pragmatist’s choice of compromise is a mistake under autocratic circumstances. This isn’t a world where we can rely on republican norms, institutions, and the rule of law to protect us. This is a world where people get robbed, blackmailed, and murdered. You ask the Don for a favor and the next thing you know he extorts from you, steals from you, and coerces you into doing terrible things.
That said, so far the role of the moral resister doesn’t exactly appear to be very effective. To escape having her decency compromised, it appears that the moral resister must abstain from the realm of the practical. This is wholly unsatisfactory. The vulnerable need protection. Meaningful resistance calls for action. In order to affect change, we have to actually do something. But how does one actively resist without falling into the traps set for the political pragmatist?
All those who have chosen themselves existentially as good persons will to choose between good and evil, for they will choose the good (to become what they are: good persons). They cannot and will not wait until told that a choice implies the choice between good and evil. They will scrutinize all possible actions under the guidance of the categories ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. One does not have to be morally rigorous to behave like this.”
In her brilliant book, A Philosophy of Morals, Agnes Heller provides us with a powerful solution. Heller borrows from Kierkegaard’s account of the power of existential choice. On Kierkegaard’s telling, if you don’t choose your own life, then others will choose one for you. Choosing your own life as an existential choice is therefore how you become free. Born a contingent being, you become the master of your own destiny by taking ownership of yourself. “Choosing ourselves,” Heller tells us, “means to destine ourselves to become what we are.”
There are many possibilities a modern person can choose from. One can choose oneself as an artist, a mother, a statesman, a poet, an artisan, etc. Making an existential choice like this is how one distinguishes a particular destiny for oneself–one that is unique to oneself. However, Heller argues that it’s also possible for us to choose ourselves “under the category of the universal.” When we choose ourselves under the universal, rather than distinguishing (separating) ourselves from the rest of humanity, we unite ourselves with the rest of humanity. This choice, Heller writes, is “tantamount to choosing ourselves as good persons.”
It is possible for us to make more than one existential choice in this way. It’s possible for example, to choose to be a good person and an artist. In cases where these choices come into conflict, it’s important for one of them to take primacy over the other. In this regard, if we want to be moral resisters who avoid the traps of the political pragmatist, it is essential that choosing ourselves as good persons is primary to all other existential choices. It trumps everything.
What it means to be a good person here isn’t complicated. A good person in this sense is simply a person “who asks the question, “What is the right thing for me to do?” whenever such a question should be asked.” As Heller explains, “All those who have chosen themselves existentially as good persons will to choose between good and evil, for they will choose the good (to become what they are: good persons). They cannot and will not wait until told that a choice implies the choice between good and evil. They will scrutinize all possible actions under the guidance of the categories ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. One does not have to be morally rigorous to behave like this.”
Notice what this existential choice accomplishes for us. I noted above that the mafia state of a Putin or a Trump is a morality-free zone. Everything is a calculation of costs and benefits. Everything is a matter of pragmatics. But when she engages in this very world, the person who has chosen herself first as a good person immediately transforms the world into a moral world with moral relationships. This happens simply because before she does anything tactical or calculating or pragmatic, she asks herself “What is the right thing for me to do?”
After asking this existentially primary question, “What is the right thing for me to do?”, it is perfectly acceptable to make pragmatic decisions and utilitarian calculations without falling into the traps set for the political pragmatist. Indeed, as a political activist trying to determine which of several courses of possible action might produced the best results, one must rely on the cost-benefit analysis of utilitarianism. But the moral resister won’t take any action that hasn’t first passed the scrutiny of examination under the categories of right and wrong.
Offered with Love
I want to invite all of you to existentially choose yourselves first as good persons, as decent persons, as persons of good will. If many of us do this the world cannot possibly go totally dark, for good wills, as Kant tells us, shine like jewels.
I want to close this post by acknowledging a debt of gratitude. I learned most of what I’ve written here from three Jewish women who came to understand these things by living under the spectre of authoritarianism: Hannah Arendt, Agnes Heller, and more recently, Masha Gessen. They are my teachers. I offer this post as a love letter to all three of them.
