It’s a measure of the depravity to which America’s national political conversation has fallen that however bad one side’s latest transgression against norms, morality or the law, there’s always something it can point to that the other side did first. The earlier outrage may not exactly justify the latest offence. But by reminding an already highly partisan audience that there is prior sinfulness in the actions of your opponents, you can dilute the negative public impact of your own wrongdoing or, at a minimum, apply some balm to a troubled private conscience.
This equivalence play, or “whataboutism,” can, if we’re not careful, neuter all efforts to hold our leaders’ actions to some objective standard. It inflicts on all judgments the terminal paralysis of moral relativism. As with the widespread undermining of objective factual truth in recent years, so the erosion of the idea of objective moral truth steadily weakens the foundations of political and civil community and softens us up for a final descent into the invented truths of totalitarianism.
In the wake of last week’s violent incursion at the US Capitol, President Donald Trump’s supporters have been working overtime on the moral-equivalence shift.
Sure, the President’s claims of a stolen election are dubious, but they’re nothing worse than what Democrats and the media did for four years in promoting the false Russia-collusion story, refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Trump presidency, and trying to destroy it.
Yes, the violence at the Capitol was terrible, but so too was the mayhem perpetrated by Black Lives Matter and Antifa in dozens of American cities last northern summer.
OK, the President’s language and affect are autocratic, but what about the rapidly encroaching illiberalism of the tech and media giants that is narrowing the boundaries of free speech?
All legitimate objections. And there have been and will be many times when all these alarming instances of progressive extremism should be thoroughly exposed and condemned.
But now is not that time.
Now is the time when conservatives especially need to look beyond the frustrations of what often seems like an unlevel moral playing field and acknowledge an unequivocal, unqualified truth: The President’s behaviour last week was uniquely and unforgivably iniquitous. And the decay goes deeper. It cannot be excused by citing counterparts on the left.
The primary responsibility for the crimes committed last week lies with the perpetrators. No doubt many of them thought they were simply exercising, robustly, their constitutional right to protest. But watch the videos and you get a sense of how malevolent many of them were.
Whether the president’s words last Wednesday were an actual incitement to violent insurrection can be debated by lawyers and semiologists. But there’s no doubt that his repeated false claims about the election provided the fuel for the metaphorical arsonists whose work he inspired.
Trump disgraced his office and the nation. His behaviour was undoubtedly an impeachable offence, even if it may not be timely or politically wise to remove him from office now.
That kind of condemnation is relatively easy. The much harder but equally vital part for conservatives is to acknowledge that the pathology on the right of American politics goes much deeper than the occupant of the Oval Office.
Members of congress must share the blame: jackals like senator Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, who thought they could scavenge opportunistically among the political scraps of the President’s reckless fictions; dozens of nameless pantywaist politicians who cowered in the shadows of his bulbous ambition. Their careers may survive. They will never outlive their infamy.
The real reason for the craven behaviour of these Republicans is not some undying personal fealty to Donald Trump. They know that he alone has a capacity to speak to millions more voters than they ever could.
He succeeded in large part because he spoke to the frustrations of so many Americans who have been disdained and discarded by a global elite that enjoys unimaginable power and privilege — and wields it for its own gain.
But what starts with righteous frustration at the accretion of power by distant elites can congeal into an alienated politics of faith, not reason, a faith that embraces conspiracy theories and fictions that unscrupulous politicians are too willing to feed. It ends in the monstrous chaos of so-called patriots violently storming the seat of republican government.
The path for a reinvigorated conservative movement is a narrow but fruitful one. It must articulate and address the legitimate grievances of Americans, while resisting the temptation to win them over with simplistic fictions.
It could start with a turn toward moral clarity.
The Wall Street Journal
More Coverage
Trump signs order to create US sovereign wealth fund
US President Donald Trump says the fund could be used to help keep TikTok operating.
Pray for surrender in Trump’s dumb trade war
After the tariff threat, Canada follows Mexico’s lead and gives him a deal to trumpet and a story to tell.