American Decency Still Lives

When pushed far enough, Americans will do the right thing

If you want to accomplish anything in politics, you have to have realistic expectations about voters. Ordinary people aren’t deeply informed about policy or politics. They have jobs to do, children to raise, lives to live. A large proportion of voters don’t have strong ideological preferences — not because they’re “moderates,” but because they don’t think ideologically at all. Instead, they think pragmatically – they think about things like the price of eggs and the cost of health insurance. And because the average voter isn’t a policy or data wonk, they are often misled – for example, by claims that crime is rising even when it’s actually falling.

Granted, some voting behavior is motivated by ugly biases. Racism and sexism, homophobia and transphobia, are still important factors in politics. But there’s a difference between political realism and nihilistic cynicism.

Many of my readers are probably aware of the famous confessional by the German pastor Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

I don’t know if Stephen Miller has ever seen these words. But if he has, he has taken them not as a warning but as operating instructions. MAGA’s ethnic cleansing plans — because that’s what they are — were clearly based on the cynical assumption that native-born white Americans wouldn’t rise to the defense of civil liberties and rule of law if state violence was directed at people who don’t look like them.

And for much of Trump’s first year in office many Democrats were reluctant to challenge his immigration policies, because their defeat in 2024 was widely seen as in part a response to surging immigration during the Biden years. Until recently, Democrats tried to keep the national conversation focused on affordability and Trump’s obvious failure to deliver on his promises to bring grocery prices way down.

While the Democratic strategy was an understandable response to a shattering electoral defeat, it rested on a cynical and nihilistic view of American voters: that they couldn’t be trusted to vote against a party that reveled in inflicting cruelty and injustice as long as the price of gasoline fell.

But recent events refute this nihilistic cynicism. Yes, Americans still name the economy as the most important political issue. But moral outrage over the Trump administration’s brutality (and its corruption, but that’s a subject for another post) has exploded as a political force over the past two months.

There was substantial resistance to ICE’s attempts to intimidate Los Angeles and Chicago. But the response since the invasion of Minneapolis (and now all of Minnesota) began in December has been on another level, a mass nonviolent uprising reminiscent of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the color revolutions in the former Soviet empire.

MPR News reports that nearly 30,000 Minnesotans have been trained as constitutional observers, with another 6,000 volunteers registered to deliver food, give at-risk families rides, and so on. This is time-consuming, exhausting, dangerousactivism. Yet ordinary Americans in large numbers are willing to do it.

Cell phone cameras and whistles can’t completely stop ICE’s brutality and lawlessness. For some reason I’m especially troubled by tales of the many cars found abandoned in the middle of the street, their windows smashed and their occupants obviously abducted. But the resistance is throwing sand in the gears and producing acute frustration among the masked thugs, who have repeatedly been filmed drawing guns on citizens doing nothing but observing them.

And the public is not on the side of the thugs.

Many commentators have, correctly, drawn parallels between current events and the way violence against protestors led to growing support for the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. But that was a gradual process. Only a third of Americans approved of Martin Luther King in 1966, the last available polling before he was assassinated.

By contrast, the Trump/Miller assault on Minnesota has produced a huge, rapid backlash. Here, for example, is the latest Marist Poll:

No doubt Trump would claim that the polls are fake. But harsh criticism of ICE and its actions is cropping up in many usually nonpolitical spaces, from hobbyist forums to, yes, professional wrestling matches.

Most Americans are decent people. They intensely dislike seeing brutal repression in their communities, even if most of the targets of this brutality have brown skins.

And Democrats should, even as a matter of cynical politics — although I hope it’s more than that — honor this decency by standing against the Trump administration’s brutal lawlessness. Of course they should continue to talk about the economy. But Trump’s immigration policies should no longer be viewed as a distraction from kitchen table issues. They have themselves become a major driver of opposition to his regime.

Many pundits have made this point — G. Elliott Morris and Greg Sargent have been especially clear about it. I would add an additional reason Democrats should go all out in opposing Trump’s deportation policies: They are an issue that won’t go away, while some of the economic issues might.

Here’s what I mean: Trump is not a consistent economic ideologue. He may instinctively side with oligarchs against workers, but he’s sometimes willing to coopt progressive ideas — as he did in calling for a cap on credit card interest rates. I don’t think he can turn around negative perceptions of the economy, but he will surely try.

But hatred of and brutality toward people of color are fundamental to Trump’s identity. He and his minions have responded to revulsion against their ethnic cleansing efforts by denying the reality of that revulsion, claiming that all the protesters and resisters are paid activists, and by doubling down on the brutality. I don’t think MAGA will change course; I don’t think it can change course.

So Trump’s war on immigrants is turning into a war against the decency of the American people. And it would be stupid as well as immoral to refuse to choose sides.

MUSICAL CODA