No, Good People Don't Still Support Him

Everyone believes they're essentially a good human being.

We all tell ourselves a story, and in that story our cause is always just, our motives are always pure, our side is eternally the right one. We've all spent a lifetime learning how to defend ourselves against criticism, even when that criticism is justified. In the name of self-preservation, we can gaslight the world and even ourselves when necessary. The assumption of our goodness protects us from accountability for thoughts and words and actions that are neither noble nor decent nor redemptive.

I often hear people say, "He or she supports him but is a really good person."

I consider that an oxymoron.

I believe aligning with him is fundamentally antithetical to anything good.

Generally speaking, there are things that good people don't do.

Good people don’t indiscriminately round up human beings, separate them from their families, and throw them into stifling dog kennels or ship them to foreign countries without due process.

Good people don’t terminate dedicated public servants, highly educated physicians and scientists, and revered generals, if they don’t like the information these people provide them.

Good people don’t prevent the release of the results of investigations into massive human trafficking and sexual assault rings.

Good people don’t employ and platform white supremacists and Nazis.
They don't erase protections for the water and the air, for the elderly, the terminally ill, and for LGBTQ people.
They don't vilify and violently attack peaceful protestors
They don't take away healthcare from the sick and the poor.
They don't gouge those in poverty while sheltering the wealthy.
They don't abuse their social media platforms to bait world leaders and to taunt private citizens.
Good people don't lie as easily as breathing, or make a mockery of a religion they have no interest in, or treat people of color and women as property, or disregard the systems and laws of this land because powerful and complicit enablers allow it.
Good people don't prey upon the vulnerable, they don't leverage their influence to bully dissenters, and they don't harbor sexual predators.

But this President is not a good human being, and there's simply no way around this truth.

Objectively speaking, he is the very worst humanity has produced, a moral bottom-feeder without scruples or conscience or decency. Outside of those indoctrinated into his dwindling, sycophantic death cult, the entire world is in agreement on this.

He is the vile personification of the Ugly American, which is why, as long as he is here and as long as he represents and holds power over this nation, we will be a dangerous place, a fractured mess, and a global embarrassment. He will ever be lowering the bar of our legacy in the world and poisoning the collective fates of hundreds of millions of people.

But that, unbelievably, somehow, is not the worst of it.

What is painfully obvious in these moments isn't simply that the person alleging to lead this country is a terrible human being; it is that anyone left still defending him, applauding him, justifying him, celebrating him, probably is too.

At this point, the only reason left to support a man like this is that he reflects your hateful heart, that he shares your contempt of people of color, your hostility toward outsiders, your toxic misogyny, your ignorant bigotry, and your feelings of supremacy. He is a snarling, vicious, grotesque avatar who says the things you believe and hurts the people you want to hurt.

Goodness is not a matter of how good you imagine you are.
It is not a matter of what you claim to believe.
It is not something you possess simply because you desire to possess it.

Goodness is determined by the way you move through this world: a world that is either more or less loving and compassionate and equitable and kind because of your presence and your decisions.

Still supporting him is an act of violence against vulnerable people.
It is an affirmation of white supremacy.
It is a celebration of cruelty.
It is a reiteration of homophobia and transphobia and nationalism and anti-Semitism.
It is a ratification of domestic terrorism.
It is a blessing of bigotry.
It is an embracing of inhumanity.

No, he is not a good human being in any way that such things are objectively measured.

And good people don't align with this, no matter what story they tell themselves.

The criminality and immorality of this president are so far beyond the pale, so beneath contempt, and so blatantly racist that they should not have a single defender. He should be universally condemned. Humanity should be in agreement in abhorring him.

And yet today (like so many other seemingly rock bottom days in the past decade), there will be millions of professed good people and Christian people, who will make excuses for him or debate his motives or diminish the damage.

They will double down and pump their chests and fly their truck flags.

They will dig their heels in to explain away or to defend what, at the end of the day, is simply a bad human being saying and doing the things that bad human beings say and do because their hearts harbor very bad things.

No, good people don't spend their every waking day generating misery, stoking division, and causing suffering.

And good people don't defend people who do.

That’s just the truth, and we’re all going to have to reckon with it.