Courage or cowardice?

Courage is what we need most in this crucial moment, but there are still too many cowards among us

This election has me thinking a lot about cowardice. Maybe that’s because it’s always been so abundant in politics.

Or perhaps it’s that Donald Trump and his hate-motivated, anti-democratic, white-nationalist movement have a way of bringing out the worst in so many people and institutions.

Whatever it is, at a moment when you’d hope to find people and institutions confronting the most authoritarian, pro-fascist major presidential candidate in American history, we see, instead, a shocking degree of accommodation and tacit support for Trump and his MAGA ideology.

By now, I guess we should know better than to trust any major institution to act altruistically. Over the past ten years, the leaders of almost every institution that many expected to show the vision and courage to defend our democracy failed us.

The courts, leaders of many major religious institutions, dozens of media organizations, and Congress did not oppose Trump. They did not defend our democracy. They did not oppose Trump as he attacked vulnerable populations and minority communities. They did not speak out about the ways he deprived so many of their human rights and promised to take away even more if he returned to power.

Many of their members/leaders either supported Trump, enabled him, or did not summon the courage the moment demanded. They capitulated to him and his movement in various but shameful ways.

The most recent examples of this kind of cowardice and accommodation can be found at the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, two institutions that made last-minute decisions to withhold endorsements in the presidential election, clearly out of fear of provoking Trump.

A group of 19 Post columnists, in a dissent published in the Post on Saturday, explained why the decision by the publication’s owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, is so disgraceful:

It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love. This is a moment for the institution to be making clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, and the threat that Donald Trump poses to them — the precise points The Post made in endorsing Trump’s opponents in 2016 and 2020.

While I understand and share the disgust of so many over these institutions’ cowardly retreat, let’s not forget the individuals who’ve remained mute and whose silence suggests tacit support for Trump — or at least has created a permission structure for many to support him.

They include former President George W. Bush and former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Both have nothing to lose by endorsing Harris based on her support for democracy, Trump’s attempt to overturn the last election, and the likelihood that he will try to do so again.

I can understand their silence in this crucial moment only through the lens of cowardice or self-interest. And I am comforted only by a belief that history will condemn their silence in the face of Trump’s racism and his fascist leanings.

And, in Louisiana, let’s not overlook U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, who had the courage and decency to vote to impeach Trump in January 2021. Now that he faces re-election in a couple of years, Cassidy has lost whatever courage he once mustered.

No one expects morally weak politicians like Gov. Jeff Landry, Sen. John Kennedy, and Reps. Steve Scalise, Garret Graves, and Clay Higgins to do the right thing. But Cassidy once showed us how to put his country before his party. Sadly, that version of Cassidy no longer exists.

But let’s end on a relatively positive note by celebrating those who have shown courage in standing up to Trump and supporting Harris. They understand that it’s not enough to withhold your support from Trump. Supporting the person who can defeat him and his white-nationalist movement is the surest way to put our country back on the right path.

To quote Elie Weisel, “Always take sides.”

I refer to Republicans like former Reps. Charles Boustany (La.), Liz Cheney (Wyoming), Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), and Fred Upton (Mich); former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan; Olivia Troye, homeland security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence; former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham; former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; and former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake. There are many more.

And then there is the most surprising and prominent Republican Harris supporter of all, former Vice President Dick Cheney, who said in September, “In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again. As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris."

Some have criticized Harris and her team for courting so many Republicans, but I think they’re wise to do so. All this Republican support not only shows that the most crucial issue of this election is the future of democracy; it also sends a signal about the importance of character and courage.

As journalist and scholar Dan Gilmore observed on Sunday, “This election is a very simple moral test. It’s so simple and direct of a moral test that even Dick Cheney can pass it.”

Screenshot of Daniel Gilmore's post on Bluesky

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Other observations on cowardice and courage

I’m not the only one writing about this topic, of course. I’d recommend the observations of New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie last week. I’ve gift-linked the entire column here, but this is my key takeaway from the piece:

For too long, too many of us have acted as if democracy can run on autopilot — as if self-government will, well, take care of itself. But it won’t. The reality is that the future of the American Republic is up to us.

We will decide if we live in a country where we govern ourselves. We will decide whether we hand this nation over to a man, and a movement, that rejects the notion of an inclusive American freedom and a broad, egalitarian American liberty. We will decide whether we will continue to seek — and expand upon — the promise of American democracy, as flawed and fraught as the reality has been.

It is, in fact, the great irony of self-government that we can decide to end it. “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher,” observed a young Abraham Lincoln in 1838. “As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” If we wish, we can vote to hand away the closest thing we have, as a people, to a birthright.

My hope is that we don’t. My hope is that enough of us recognize the plain fact that Trump has been nothing more than a force for corruption, greed, cruelty and cynicism in American life. That he has empowered the worst among us and encouraged the worst in many of us. And that his great accomplishment as a national political leader is to spread the dangerous lie that we can blame the weakest and most vulnerable in our midst for our problems.

My hope, in short, is that enough Americans understand that there is no amount of harm you can inflict on others that will save you, give you strength, make you whole or keep you safe.

I also recommend this piece on Substack by former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan. She wrote in part:

Billionaires, pretty clearly, are not going to save us. Quite the opposite.

What should the response be? There’s only one available at the moment. Caring citizens and all defenders of democracy need to do everything in their power to vote Trump out, and begin the long road toward reform of a broken nation.

And to keep in mind the historian Timothy Snyder’s first rule of opposing tyranny: Do not obey in advance. “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individual think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”