Moral purity is nice, but a still-standing country is nicer.
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As President Donald Trump and unelected president Elon Musk go about shredding not just the US government but our once-great system of health research, our relationships with other nations, our security, our standing in the world, and the general traditions of democracy and justice, I am desperately hoping that we see a backlash, and soon.
And I think we will.
Prices seem destined to continue to rise. Americans may say they want harsh immigration enforcement, but that will change when horrifying images of sobbing children being pulled from school and confused grannies being arrested in church start to proliferate.
I don’t think Americans will like it when our bureaucracies stop functioning: when grandpa can’t get his Social Security payment, when mom gets kicked off Medicare, when your kid’s public school is cutting programs and can’t teach American history, when there are no rangers to let you into the national park, when your town floods and FEMA doesn’t show up, when you see on the news that critical research that might have cured your best friend’s cancer was canceled.
At some point, I think — I desperately, desperately hope — many more Americans will realize the damage the Trump administration is doing, and they will start to question it, or even oppose it.
The hardest job in the world will be to welcome them, to talk with them, and to resist the urge to tell them that they are absolute morons who got us into this mess in the first place.
Commentator and colleague Julian Sanchez put it like this:
In the coming weeks, a lot of slow-on-the uptake folks are going to begin belatedly realizing Trump is both an inept moron and a dangerous autocrat. Our great civic challenge in these trying times will be calmly welcoming them aboard instead of primal-screaming in their faces.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) 2025-02-06T00:53:27.699Z
He’s right. (Instead, we should primal scream in the privacy of our own homes, or to our friends).
To be clear, they are absolute morons who got us into this mess in the first place. But our job now is to help the morons see the light.
There are many people who voted for exactly what Trump is doing, but they aren’t (generally) going to be the ones complaining. The ones who wanted the racist stuff, the mass deportations, the Nazi marches, and the white supremacist podcasters and the raging misogyny? Those aren’t the people I’m talking about, and those also aren’t the people who are generally going to be surprised and appalled by what Trump is doing.
The people I’m talking about here are the ones surprised to be getting their faces eaten after they voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party, or the ones getting their faces eaten after they refused to vote for the At Least We Won’t Eat Your Face Party.
I’m talking about the people who were mad about consumer prices and will be upset if the president who promised tariffs and inflationary monetary policies does, as predicted, institute policies that make prices skyrocket.
I’m talking about the people who dislike those other bad immigrants over there but will be devastated when their own friends, neighbors, and even family members are deported.
I’m talking about the people who refused to vote for Kamala Harris because of Joe Biden’s spineless position on Gaza, who are now shocked that Trump is, as literally everyone with two brain cells could have predicted, several magnitudes worse — giving Israel carte blanche to do truly whatever it wants, proposing an American takeover of the Gaza Strip, encouraging criminal settlers to steal even more land, proposing that Palestinians are fully kicked out of what remains of their historic homeland, and planning to deport foreign students in the US who protest.
Trust me when I say that I wish to God that each and every one of these people — and everyone else who voted for Trump or refused to vote for Harris and is going to suffer or at least feel sad or angry about others’ suffering because of his presidency — would look in the mirror and feel a deep, crushing shame.
Trust me when I say that the absolute worst parts of me kind of shrug when they experience the consequences of their own actions.
Trust me when I say that I wish they would realize the cost of their mistake, that they would realize it was their mistake and that they aren’t a hapless victim.
Recrimination is satisfying and probably at some point necessary. But that point is not now. The immediate, urgent task now is to minimize the damage from this administration. To do that, we need as many helping hands as we can get — even dirty ones, even ones attached to real dummies.
I wish they would take even the tiniest ounce of responsibility for their role in the destruction we’re just seeing the start of.
I suspect, though, that most of these people are not going to learn a single thing, and will not take responsibility for a single thing. I suspect the kind of people who would vote for Trump or intentionally sit the election out are either not the most self-reflective and tuned-in people, or are not the kind of people who do stuff like take responsibility for their own actions.
Call them in anyway.
Recrimination is satisfying and probably at some point necessary. But that point is not now. The immediate, urgent task now is to minimize the damage from this administration.
To do that, we need as many helping hands as we can get — even dirty ones, even ones attached to real dummies.
If someone is tiptoeing toward opposing Trump, help pull them all the way in. Share information with them, share acts of resistance with them, then complain about them in a group chat later like an adult.
This is really, really hard. I personally (clearly) carry a lot of anger toward Trump voters. Strategically, though, it is far better to join forces even with people who have made spectacularly bad decisions in the past than to argue about those past decisions while this feckless administration goes on its breaking-everything spree.
(Which isn’t to say that, meh, it’s all in the past; it is to say that assigning proportionate blame and pressing people to understand their own role in this mess can come after the urgent moment has passed).
Are the people who voted for Trump people whose judgment I would trust? No. Are they people I would listen to about literally anything in the future? Also no. Are they people I even think are morally decent? No, not really. Do they deserve good will or grace or your time? Of course not.
Give it anyway.
Moral purity is nice, but a still-standing country is nicer.
As Julian puts it, in a house fire, you don’t say no to someone who is willing to grab a bucket — yes, even if that person initially thought the arsonist had some pretty good ideas.
There will, I hope, be time for reflection; there should be time for responsibility-taking and more than a little assigning of blame. But that comes later. Right now, we put out the fire.
Reprinted, with permission, from Jill Filipovic’s substack.
Jill Filipovic is a journalist, lawyer, and author of OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind and The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness.
