Too Much Shame to Absorb?

In February 2016, eight months before the Presidential election of Donald Trump, Ezra Klein, co-founder, editor-at-large, and columnist for Vox wrote this article entitled The Rise of Donald Trump is a Terrifying Moment in American Politics. In it he states:

Trump is the most dangerous major candidate for president in memory. He pairs terrible ideas with an alarming temperament; he’s a racist, a sexist, and a demagogue, but he’s also a narcissist, a bully, and a dilettante. He lies so constantly and so fluently that it’s hard to know if he even realizes he’s lying. He delights in schoolyard taunts and luxuriates in backlash.

It was almost as if Klein was peering into a crystal ball. More importantly he reflected on something even more insightful. He wrote:

Trump’s other gift – the one that gets less attention but is perhaps more important – is his complete lack of shame. It’s easy to underestimate how important shame is in American politics. But shame is our most powerful restraint on politicians who would find success through demagoguery. Most people feel shame when they’re exposed as liars, when they’re seen as uninformed, when their behavior is thought cruel, when respected figures in their party condemn their actions, when experts dismiss their proposals, when they are mocked booed and protested.

Trump doesn’t. He has the reality television star’s ability to operate entirely without shame, and that permits him to operate entirely without restraint.  It is the single scariest facet of his personality. It is the one that allows him to go where others won’t, to say what others can’t, to do what others wouldn’t.

Now that we’re more than two years into this American version of Brexit, known otherwise as the Trump Presidency, we are experiencing distinct changes that are impacting the very conscience of the Nation. The crass ethics and behavior of Donald Trump that are embraced or ignored by perhaps 70 million Americans have been so pervasive as to affect Americans well beyond this so-called “base”.

De-humanizing other human beings because of their nationality, ethnicity, or race, separating young children from their mothers as an act of policy, elevating hate to be used as functional morality, arbitrarily denying justice, fighting to deny health care, giving national assets to cronies, cuddling with foreign antagonists, exploding wealth inequality, and simply eroding truth (to name a few) have numbed us. Not just those who support Trump or have via Fox News allowed themselves to be manipulated by ludicrous fears, but also by the rest of us.

Sometimes it takes years or even decades for shame to be understood and felt. It can be complicated; think slavery, Native Americans, colonization, Jim Crow, Vietnam, Iraq. However, now it seems too many of us can avoid shame with aplomb, just like our leader. Accepting atrocious policy is becoming just another day-in-the-life. The easiest example to describe this can be summed up in two words: Puerto Rico.

The visual of Donald Trump in Puerto Rico standing in a crowded room and throwing rolls of paper towels out to the audience is a virtual metaphor on how our nation has lowered the bar for shame avoidance.

What is wrong with us?

Hurricane Maria in September 2017 was devastating to the 3.4 million American citizens on that island, a greater population than 24 states.  Months after the storm Donald Trump stated what the Americans on Puerto Rico experienced wasn’t a “real catastrophe”. Further, his tweets consistently inferred that Puerto Ricans weren’t real Americans, by his constant references to “them” and “us”. His administration treated these Americans in a like fashion.

Little urgency was applied to the devastation. His administration either blocked or attempted to block bipartisan Congressional action to help, action that had already been watered down by Republicans. To date only about 15% of the funds allocated to assist these individuals has been spent.

Where is our outrage?

95% of the population had no electricity, half the population had no running water, and a majority of residential housing was either completely or significantly destroyed. After a month a full 88% still had no power and clean water was still sparse. It would take a year to bring electricity to over 90% of the island. It is still out in isolated areas. Think about that the next time you have a 12 hour blackout.

The official US death totals were conveniently understated at 64, when Trump was throwing paper towels, and ended up at 2975.  A Harvard study put the total over 4600.  The obvious conclusion is that most of the deaths were the result of inaction in the months following the immediate ending of the storm.  When Carmen Yulin Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, pleaded for help weeks after the storm saying “we are dying” she was telling the truth. Instead she was maligned by Trump and Fox News.

Where is our shame?

The treatment of the Americans who survived Hurricane Marie in Puerto Rico only to be subjected to the indifference of our Government should be an outrage that demands attention by every one of our representatives. However, we are in a different age, an age where it is morally acceptable to be callous, self-centered, unconcerned, and cold.  They say the fish rots from the head. Never has that been truer. 

Even as Americans in Puerto Rico still live under tarps by the thousands and 14% of their population (nearly 500,000) have been forced to leave, we can listen to Donald Trump and his foul, profane language and say ”well…that’s just Trump” unaware that his shamelessness is infecting us all.