A moral compass
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. — Benjamin Franklin
A friend recently suggested that the Democrats were unsuccessful in this election, in part, because they failed to acknowledge plainly obvious truths, and even punished those who asserted them. After a mild rebuke, he retracted plainly obvious, leaving just truths. I’ve been thinking about this exchange again recently. Are there absolute truths? I would say there certainly are, but I would concede also that there are things that appear true from one perspective but are equally untrue from another.
This is the basis of moral relativism. Morality isn’t absolute. We can — and will — have fundamental disagreements about the right course of action even when we agree on the facts and even when we have a shared understanding of the consequences of our actions. Different cultures, different societies, even different communities can have different moral standards.
Our world isn’t feeling so upside down simply because we disagree about what is true. Or because we lack the empathy to see that what feels true to me may not feel true to you if your circumstances are different. It’s something else. I used to believe that Donald Trump was a moral relativist, which seemed ironic, because it has traditionally been conservatives who claimed the moral firmament, labeling liberals as wishy-washy relativists.
But now I see that Donald Trump actually lacks any sort of moral compass. He is, in fact, more of a moral nihilist than a relativist. Trump occupies a world where nothing is morally right or morally wrong. Morality does not exist. Trump’s shifting morality is beyond clear definition or transparent explanation. The trolling, the gaslighting, and the lying are all simply a means to an end — power. That end, to his adherents, is conveniently open to interpretation, contextualized for the perspective that is most compatible and consistent with their own ends.
In this upside down worldview, female firefighters are to blame for the California wildfires. DEI initiatives are to blame for the airline disaster over the Potomac. Nazi salutes are just simple expressions of enthusiasm. Andrew Tate is a victim. And Ukraine is the aggressor against Russia. Putin is as aggrieved and mistreated as Trump himself.
We’re all guilty of a certain amount of moral relativism. Good people can rationalize Israel’s war crimes as an appropriate and justified response to the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7. And you don’t have to be a Zionist to have this view. You don’t even have to be Jewish. But Donald Trump’s moral compass is relative to only one perspective, his own. Politics has never seemed more personal.
German sociologist Max Weber coined the term patrimonialism to describe the most common model of traditional, pre-modern authoritarian rule. He described a form of political organization in which all power flows directly from the personal authority of the ruler. There is no distinction between public and private. Armies are loyal to the leader, not the state. Power is centralized, and the leader asserts direct control over the military, resources, and institutions.
With the rise of democracy, capitalism, and democratic institutions, Weber had assumed patrimonialism would soon be an artifact of history. The remainder of the 20th century might have proved him right, but the early 21st would prove him wrong.
Patrimonialism is less a form of government than a style of governing, wrote Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic this week. It is not defined by institutions or rules. In fact, it works to dismantle systems of rules that act as barriers to personal power. As it is based on individual loyalty and on rewarding friends and punishing enemies, it can also be found among tribes, street gangs, and criminal organizations.
Under Vladimir Putin’s rule, the Russian political system, which had been making democratic progress, has been firmly remade in the patrimonial model and transformed into an authoritarian dictatorship with a personality cult. Putin’s rule has been characterized by widespread corruption and human rights violations, including the suppression and imprisonment of political opponents, intimidation and censorship of independent media, and rigged elections.
Putin has spread his brand of personal politics to Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and India. In their recent book, The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers Our Future Gradually, scholars Stephen E. Hanson and Jeffrey S. Kopstein describe how these countries cooperate like a syndicate of crime families “working out problems, divvying up the spoils, sometimes quarreling, but helping each other when needed. Putin in this scheme occupied the position of the capo di tutti capi, the boss of bosses.” Enter Donald Trump.
So many of Trump’s early moves have followed this script, dismantling the bureaucratic institutions that have no loyalty to him. If he can reconstruct them or reconstitute them to codify this loyalty, he might. (See the shake-up at Kennedy Center.) But otherwise, he may just gut them, like USAID. He has also moved quickly to remove barriers to corruption, including the illegal firing of 17 inspectors general; the suspension of enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bans bribery of foreign officials, because it “impedes the United States’ foreign policy objectives;” and the firing of the head of the government’s ethics office, a supposedly independent agency overseeing anti-corruption rules and financial disclosures for the executive branch.
Trump seems to exercise power for power’s sake. It is power itself that creates a certain moral rectitude. Might is right. For the past three years, free countries around the world have praised Ukraine and President Zelenskyy for their courage, an underdog nation fighting for its survival against one of history’s great and powerful oppressors. But Trump doesn’t value courage or gumption. He values raw power. To Trump, three years of fighting suggests that Ukraine is a loser not a brave fighter.
Along with much of the country, I was shocked, saddened, sickened, and embarrassed to watch Zelenskyy’s meeting with Trump in the Oval Office. Trump has said more than once that Zelenskyy is negotiating without any cards. On Fox News Radio’s The Brian Kilmeade Show, he said, “I’ve been watching for years, and I’ve been watching him negotiate with no cards. He has no cards, and you get sick of it. You just get sick of it. And I’ve had it.” He made the same claim to Zelenskyy — as well as to the press and the entire world — this week in the Oval Office. Zelenskyy responded that he’s not playing cards.
Trump seemed to enjoy the explosive display. “This is going to be great television, I will say that,” Trump groused as he escorted the media out. News outlets called the outburst unprecedented. Historians noted the significance of a meeting that marked US abdication of its role as a global defender of freedom. It left me with an uneasy feeling, wondering what America stands for anymore. Are we still a just and generous nation?
Brian Glenn, Marjorie Taylor Green’s boyfriend, used his platform in the press pool to criticize what Zelenskyy was wearing. What?! Setting aside the fact that just days earlier Elon Musk was wearing a tee-shirt standing next to the Resolute Desk with one of his 14 children, what did it matter?
The primary evil of patrimonialism, it seems to me, is the exercise of as much power as possible to see how far it can extend. But in my morality, might does not make right.
Pope Francis apparently agrees. In his encyclical letter On Care for Our Common Home, he observed that “immense inequality, injustice and acts of violence” have arisen from adoption of the principle of “might is right.” Winner takes all is not a Judeo-Christian ideal. Similarly, in his Cooper Union campaign address, Abraham Lincoln turned the phrase: “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.” We don’t need to exercise power simply because we can.
Simply put, Trump is a bully. He lacks the empathy of Pope Francis. He lacks the decency of Abe Lincoln. And he lacks the moral compass to be President of the United States.
