"Have You No Sense of Decency?": the Cruelty and Irresponsibility of Failing to Break with Trump

An Open Letter to Senator Corker, Senator Alexander, and Representative Duncan:

When I talk to people less pessimistic than I am about self-correcting capacities in our political system, they often valorize a turning point in the battle against McCarthyism.

In 1954 Joseph Welch famously responded to Joseph McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Sitting down to write you about the despicable priorities encoded in Mr. Trump’s budget, I thought of this as I searched for some shred of optimism about our country.

I redirect these words to you, since I would like to believe you intend to be morally serious and thoughtful leaders. However, if I understand correctly (I hope you can change my mind!) you have not taken unambiguous stands in opposition to Trump and all he stands for.

Of course, by 1954 the US had already done enough terrible things to lead many people to abandon hope for our country. Still, the resonance of public stands like Welch’s, appealing to the better traditions within our history, has seemed to me, until recently, to provide a bare minimum of rhetorical power. It has offered at least fig leaf of credibility—and at times more than this—to enable a critical mass of citizens to sustain, even if not exactly satisfaction with our country, at least enough loyalty to provide legitimacy and some confidence that the US is not a failed state.

Today we are flirting with this latter status—a failed government, out of control and unaccountable to common sense. We are an object of international pity, fear, and contempt. This situation is extremely dangerous! I believe the complacency of Republican leaders and your propaganda arms like FOX News is either misplaced, if sincere, and if it is merely cynical it is shockingly irresponsible. Status quo policies (especially from Republicans, although part of the blame also goes to the sort of Clintonite compromises that swung the election to Trump) are profoundly failing—especially through refusing to create an acceptable quality of work (for most young people today) or a viable ecological future (for any people in rising generations.)

Trump has already done dozens of things that merit a response like Welch’s. But perhaps that was true of McCarthy by 1954 too. The question is when enough is enough—when a critical mass takes action, joined by some who were formerly on the fence.

I urge you in the strongest terms I can convey: please get off the fence! Do it for the sake of the religious morality I suppose you see yourself pursuing (although it is hard for me to understand this), out of loyalty to our country, or even solely for your party's long-term self-interest.

Perhaps you will ask “what’s new about Trump, really?” Sometimes I ask this of myself, when I think about Ronald Reagan and recall the saying that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. Today it seems to me that this sort of cynicism—discounting Reagan’s trickle-down fantasies, race-baiting, and disregard for truth as “mere tragedy,” and then normalizing the crimes of our emperor-with-no-clothes and his abdication of responsibilities as a more farcical extrapolation—is worse than raising an alarm about the crisis we are approaching.

At some point, people of decency and intelligence, who have a sincere sense of caring for our country’s future (or even have selfish concerns about their own children!) must call a halt to the gutting and looting of everything in our society except the super-rich and the military. What Mr. Trump is doing to our home, with no discernible serious pushback from Republican leaders, is easily worse than the crisis our country faced under McCarthyism.

Turning to the budget, let's recall that the top income tax rate in 1954 was 90%, under Republican leadership. And is not the decade of the 1950s what MAGA is thinking back about with nostalgia? (Granted that Trump might prefer a different era—perhaps the Gilded Age with child labor and starvation wages, or the hedonism and sexual license of the 1970s that Trump's degenerate personal brand leans into--the sort of behavior that Republicans used to decry from Bill Clinton or John F. Kennedy?

What Trump’s budget does for national priorities—without a mandate from his voting base, much less any possible justification based on majority will—is a disgrace. I have no suggestions for small-scale tinkering to make it marginally less absurd and offensive. Rather, we need to begin by impeaching Trump for his many conflicts of interests and obstructions of justice. After that we need a profound change in mindset about priorities.

Please start over with comprehensive immigration reform (including a path to citizenship for DACA kids and others who in practice have been invited here to work in businesses like Trump’s), rapid expansion of health care toward Medicare for All (to save money, uphold basic human rights enjoyed by people in other countries, and address problems of Obamacare flagged during Trump’s campaign), deep cuts in U.S. military commitments (one of Trump’s campaign promises), a serious proposal (as distinct from a Trump-style scam) for expanding green infrastructure (a major part of Trump’s mandate), and a fundamental rethinking of the utterly irresponsible and immoral tax breaks to the rich. (This latter rethinking was also was part of Trump’s mandate—at least insofar as his rhetoric about it was better than the other Republican Presidential candidates.)

In the 1980s (another era Trump may wish to return to?) the distribution of wealth in our society was exceedingly less skewed toward the 1% compared to where it is today. Could not policy-makers provisionally agree to set this 1980s distribution as a bipartisan benchmark? Personally I believe wealth was grotesquely skewed even during the 1930s to 1970s era, before we began to unravel toward unchecked plutocracy in the 1980s. But could not people of goodwill forge a compromise for the sake of our country–or translated even for the most extreme libertarians, simply for the sake of not killing a golden goose?

Couldn't you agree that defending the rule of law in our country and getting back to Reagan-era levels of inequality might work as a benchmark both parties could aim for, before our entire social polity goes off the rails? Although this would be a enormous concession for the left, at least it would be a step in the right direction. In fact, it would set a goal more ambitious that what centrist Democrats are asking for these days. I find it mind-boggling that Bernie Sanders may err more on the side of moderation than radicalism.

Thank you for considering these ideas. With each passing week it becomes harder for me to grant most Republicans the benefit of doubt, that you have a sincere sense of anything I can recognize as Christian morality, nor that you any sense of patriotic or global responsibility to govern for the common good.

I do try my best to grant you such sincerity. But if so, how can you possibly not be breaking with Trump—decisively and radically? It makes no sense. Please either explain this to me, or do some soul-searching and reconsider.

Sincerely,

Mark Hulsether