“O ye scions of a noble race, your actions
Ill befit your station.” - Frederick William Faber
When my kid brother and I were guilty of some infraction of the rules governing gentlemanly comportment, our grandfather would always first roll his eyes in frustration and then inevitably cite the lines used above as the exergue to this short piece. As boys, we thought that Pop must surely have memorized the entire Norton Anthology, for he was wont to cite famous poems upon any feasible occasion. Decades later, I found to my amazement that T. Tertius Noble had been so moved by Faber’s one sentence that Dr. Noble, then Organist and Master of Choristers at Saint Thomas Fifth Avenue, composed his beautiful hymn “Souls of Men, Why Will Ye Scatter?” in order to feature Faber’s line prominently. Pop would not have been the least surprised.
As I have tried to understand what has happened to our democracy since the advent of the Trumpian madness, now what seems another lifetime ago, I have thought about Faber’s line and Noble’s old and timely hymn every time Trump’s latest insane hallucination appears in one of his oral ravings or on his Truth Social website. We have friends so completely hypnotized by Trump that they sleep with their charged cellphones on their nightstands in order to read as soon as possible whatever Trump has posted during his ravings through the night. I have read and reread the most respected of commentators and historians just trying to understand how this rapid descent into madness has occurred on such a scale to imperil our country and, more so every day it seems, the world order. Relying on Arendt and Foucault most especially, I have finally come to realize that tyrants are truly gifted at unleashing the basest of human instincts, often lurking just under the surface of the rational human mind, by their preternatural abilities to telegraph vile messages through whatever communicative vehicle they use.
Witness Hitler’s utilization of visual images at his public rallies and his concomitant uncanny use of the radio to broadcast his siren calls to madness. One of the lethal consequences of his unleashing base instincts in his admirers: highly educated Germans willingly jettisoning their moral compasses to plan and subsequently execute with Teutonic efficiency concentration camps purposefully organized to murder millions of their fellow human beings solely because they happened to be Jewish and then to erase any evidence of their having been slaughtered by burning their mortal remains in ovens. The infamy of their national surrender to madness lives on today.
As I write these lines, one must wonder if the same surrender to infamy is not occurring to our democracy at this fragile moment in our history. Trump, like Hitler and every tyrant across time’s relentless march, has managed to unleash the basest of instincts in millions of our fellow citizens. It matters not how insane his ravings might be, how numerous the incessant lies, but his MAGA devotees bow down to Trump with every breath they take.
Somehow, tyrant Trump’s racism, misogyny, pursuit of power for its own sake (“I run the country and I run the world”), and all the rest are embraced and simultaneously loudly applauded. One listens eagerly to his myriad pronouncements, dons one’s little red hat, raises one’s right arm in loyal salute, and openly shares one’s prejudices, insecurities, and anxieties with one’s fellow believers in our Grifter-in-Chief. As one of my childhood friends believes, “Jesus has sent our beloved genius President to rescue our sinful nation and the world from ruin.”
What continues however to haunt my own consciousness is the abject silence of our elected Republican representatives at every level. No matter how infamous the latest remark, delivered orally or blasted out during the early morning hours every day on Truth Social, our GOP representatives remain forever forgiving and forever excusing by remaining completely mute. But other than having a Trump choir sing Dr. Noble’s hymn several times a day on the steps of our once desecrated Capitol to remind themselves of the cost of silence in face of infamy, they might reread two chapters of twentieth-century history to comprehend how other Republicans reacted to blatant infamy in their time.
The first Republican member of Congress to speak out against the heinous Joe McCarthy was Margaret Chase Smith, then in her early fifties. In a famous speech on the Senate floor, she denounced Crazy Joe, who then, in true Trumpian fashion, viciously retaliated against her at every political turn. Edward R. Murrow then took to the national airwaves to denounce McCarthy for his witch hunt to locate those evil Communists lurking under every bed owned by our political representatives. Joseph Welch then cemented his courageous moral role in our nation’s history by asking Crazy Joe in the Army-McCarthy hearings in June of 1954, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” One wonders when the Joe Welches of today’s GOP have ever once asked their exalted tyrant-leader the same question.
When the Senate finally censured the infamous McCarthy, 22 Republicans joined all 44 Democrats and formally voted to censure their deranged colleague. Profiles in courage indeed, from Smith to those Republicans who voted to demand McCarthy’s royally deserved, humiliated exit from public life. But choosing for whatever reason to remain mute when faced with blatant infamy has a long, tragic history in the accounts of remaining silent. The noble George Marshall and his wife listened to Walter Cronkite on CBS radio and then television every evening at 6:00 to hear President Eisenhower finally denounce McCarthy’s ravings that Marshall (Marshall!) was a closet Communist. Ike never did denounce McCarthy’s vicious denunciations of his former superior and dear friend, ironically the one individual most responsible for FDR’s naming Eisenhower to direct Operation Overlord.
Then fast forward some 20 years. Who, faced with Nixon’s blatant infamy, went to the White House to tell their President that he had no choice but to resign? Republican Senators Barry Goldwater, Hugh Scott, and Republican Representative John Rhodes. And the next day, Nixon went on the television to announce his resignation.
As I previously wrote in these pages, Trump makes the heinous Nixon look like Mother Theresa.
A few weeks after his predecessor’s resignation, President Gerald Ford pardons Nixon, declaring to the American citizenry that our long national nightmare was at long last over. President Trump pardons on his first day in office in his second term thousands of his ardent supporters who as violent protesters had dared attack the Capitol, enthusiastically following their leader’s oft-repeated rabid entreaties to “stop the steal,” seriously wounding scores of police officers, and even tragically killing several.
Our “national nightmare” continues apace at warp speed each day the Trumpian infamy remains, infesting so much of our national psyche and body politic. And our tyrant’s cabinet is a cesspool that apparently has no bottom. Long gone are the Boltons and Tillersons who stood between Trump and the abject loss of all morality in our tyrant’s first term in office. Instead, we now have our Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem denouncing an innocent young mother savagely murdered by an ICE agent in Minneapolis as a “domestic terrorist.” One must wonder where the GOP voices are heard to denounce the vile Noem, Vance, and Trump for the sheer audacity of their lies. “Domestic terrorist” indeed. The proper individuals for such a moniker are the ICE agent, his supporters in the Trumpian universe, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Vice President, and yes the President of the United States. How shamefully far have we fallen in such a short number of years?
History will crucify not only those who have willingly and ever so eagerly drunk the Trumpian Kool-Aid of madness but also more especially those elected Republican representatives who continue to remain silent when confronted by infamy on a seemingly hourly basis. Liz Cheney will be heralded for valiantly standing up to Trump, she being the rightful descendant of Margaret Chase Smith. Those GOP elected officials, however, will reap what they have indeed sown by standing aside and saying nothing when our democracy is threatened as it has never been before by having an unabashed tyrant befoul an Oval Office once graced by the likes of Honest Abe. Future Arendts and future Foucaults will ask of today’s elected Republican representatives, “Souls of men, why will ye scatter?” I hope to live long enough to try to understand the answers, which might explain the frightening cost of silence in our time.
James F. Jones, Jr., an American academic and educator, is president emeritus of Trinity College and Kalamazoo College and the former president of Sweet Briar College.
