Orwell, Trump, and the dangers of a profoundly indecent man in the presidency.

“Either we all live in a decent world, or nobody does,” wrote George Orwell. It’s from his essay, “The Lion and the Unicorn,” which was a prose-poem in some ways to the quiet virtues of his native England. It so affected me that I actually remember the moment I was reading it. I was a 13 year old on the top deck of a double-decker bus, the windows opaque with condensation, the air thick with cigarette smoke, the skies dark outside, rain falling steadily, making my way home from school.

Decency. This was Orwell’s deep theme — not exactly a moral virtue as Aristotle might conceive of it, but more of a cultural and ethical baseline. Orwell saw it primarily in ordinary people, especially the English, and rarer among intellectuals: “It is not easy to crash your way into the literary intelligentsia if you happen to be a decent human being.” He rebuked Jonathan Swift because he “couldn’t see what the simplest person sees, that life is worth living and human beings, even if they’re dirty and ridiculous, are mostly decent.”

Decency was something Orwell found among the men and women he fought alongside in the Spanish Civil War, among the homeless and poor in Wigan, and amid the flower-loving, stamp-collecting Englishmen in their home-castles: a recognition of our shared brokenness, which begets a very basic human compassion.

I love this passage, from his review of Gandhi’s autobiography:

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals.

Sanctity is inhuman if it denies this (Hitchens’ point); ditto ideology. Decency is different and simple. It is loving your girlfriend, recoiling at a bully, defending a friend, telling a simple truth, respecting another’s dignity, doing an honest day’s work, speaking in plain English. You can see it depicted across Orwell’s sprawling oeuvre. Think of Boxer — the loyal, ingenuous cart-horse in Animal Farm, who trusts his superiors and works hard for the common good. Or Winston Smith’s simple, human, decent love for Julia: the love that Big Brother tortures him to betray.

Orwell saw decency in all mankind, but in one of his more Burkean moods, he recognized its particular cultural power in English civilization: its inherited pragmatism and sense of fairness, moderation and indifference to abstraction, dislike of war and cruelty, lack of asceticism, and an abundant sense of humor. Check out this fine, recent essay on the variations on his decency theme. Orwell was not glorifying his homeland, but appreciating it. He wasn’t a nationalist, but he was a patriot:

In England such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in. They may be illusions, but they are very powerful illusions. The belief in them influences conduct, national life is different because of them.

This is one reason why Britain did not succumb to fascism, when everyone else in Europe did. I’d argue further that the American experience is more influenced by this English sensibility than by any other from outside itself.

“Justice, liberty and objective truth” are still believed in here among ordinary Americans. There remains a common aversion to cruelty, unfairness, extremism, and lies in our everyday lives. It has its roots in Christianity — as liberalism does, as we are beginning to understand better. But it can endure without religion as part of a culture. And this commitment to decency is, as in England, an invisible but vital bulwark of democracy itself.

Democracy requires decency because it requires mutual respect: to defend others even as we disagree with them, to accept decisions others have made and elections we have lost, to distinguish between robust rhetoric and dehumanizing cruelty, to accept objective truth when it proves us wrong, to maintain a baseline of civility, to accept that we are all in this together. Politics is inextricable from culture, and a decent culture will sustain democracy while an indecent one will ultimately unravel it.

This is why I reject the shallow accusation that I have “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” It’s too glib, too dismissive. Yes, some have gone overboard in opposing this president; from Russiagate to the Bragg indictment, overreach has been real. I’ve acknowledged it. But the core impulse to reject Trump outright, to see him as uniquely hideous in American political history — as a national, collective disgrace — remains a vitally important one.

Because Donald Trump is the most indecent man, by far, to ever hold the presidency. He has openly mocked the disabled and the sick; he has reveled in stories of torture and murder; he has spent decades grabbing women “by the pussy” and bragged about it; he has derided prisoners of war … for being captured. He parlayed his own divorce into tabloid coverage and spoke publicly of wanting to date his own daughter. He began his political rise by pushing a Birther conspiracy he knew was a racist lie. We have become inured to his references to “shit-hole countries” and “the 51st state” and “Gavin Newscum,” to a misogyny that made Jeffrey Epstein a close friend, and to his gratuitous depiction of his predecessor as a mere “autopen” in the White House itself.

The indecency is in substance as well as style. It is one thing to be a realist in foreign policy, to accept the morally ambiguous in an immoral world; it is simply indecent to treat a country, Ukraine, invaded by another, Russia, as the actual aggressor and force it to accept a settlement on the invader’s terms. It is one thing to find and arrest illegal immigrants; it is indecent to mock and ridicule them, and send them with no due process to a foreign gulag where torture is routine. It is one thing to enforce immigration laws; it is another to use masked, anonymous men to do it. It is one thing to cut foreign aid; it is simply indecent to do so abruptly and irrationally so that tens of thousands of children will needlessly die.

We have slowly adjusted to this entirely new culture from the top, perhaps in the hope that it will somehow be sated soon — but then new indecencies happen. You think you’ve reached an all-time low, and then a trap door opens and we’re down in the sub-basement.

Just this week, Trump told a reporter asking a perfectly legitimate question: “Quiet. Quiet, Piggy” — pointing a finger inches from her face. In the Oval Office, he defended the Saudi prince’s orchestration of a brutal murder and dismembering of a WaPo journalist thus: “a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.” And he said of lawmakers who argued that his “war” in the Caribbean was illegal and the military should not obey illegal commands: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD” and “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR punishable by DEATH.” (Washington, of course, was a stickler for the laws of war.)

Indecency is infectious when broadcast proudly at the very top in full view of everyone. You want to see the full context of antisemitism’s hideous return? Try focusing on a president who has relentlessly legitimized demonization and dehumanization of others for a decade. Nick Fuentes’ casual mention of his fandom for Stalin — and Tucker Carlson’s descent into Coughlin territory — are downstream of the soulless disinhibition pioneered by the president himself. In a culture where anything can be said, and decency is over, Jew hatred will rise to the surface like pus to a poultice. Recall that infamous footage of ordinary Germans humiliating Jews on the street. Indecency begets greater indecency. The Holocaust was just a matter of time.

I know what’s coming next, of course. This column will receive a chorus of accusations of “TDS” and how it’s deranged to oppose a president just because of his “mean tweets,” or to compare him with Hitler, like I just did. (I didn’t, of course; I just noted that indecency has a political history.) A blizzard of “whatabouts” will ensue; I’ll be ridiculed for still not “getting it.”

But I do get it. I understand why Trump was elected and re-elected. I accept the failings of the alternative. I support some of his policy changes. But what I want to say to those deriding me is: you still know I’m right. You know who this man is. The record is so clear, the core indecency so manifest and disgusting you cannot look away. This is not about “mean tweets.” It is about a brutal assault on common decency in a democracy. And common decency — as conservatives once knew, and Orwell grasped so keenly — matters. It really does.

Because Anglo-American democracy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s embedded in an inherited wider culture of decency. Attack that decency in favor of insult and cruelty, and you are directly assaulting the foundations of democracy. That is why Trump remains an insidious threat to our way of life and to free people across the globe. Indecency is always an indispensable prologue to tyranny. It makes authoritarianism possible.

But what makes authoritarianism inevitable is public acquiescence to it.

I don’t think most Americans — including most Trump supporters — seriously want to embrace his vileness. They want to bracket it, say it’s no big deal, and point to what Trump does and not what he says. But what they need to understand is that tolerating indecency at such a high level, treating it as funny or a foible or as a way to “own the libs,” carries a logic that history warns directly against. In Orwell’s words, “Fascism has a great appeal for certain simple and decent people who genuinely want to see justice done to the working class … and the most urgent need of the next few years is to capture those normal decent ones before Fascism plays its trump card.”

Don’t be like Boxer from Animal Farm, who kept his own decency but ignored the indecency of his leader — “Napoleon is always right” — and was finally transported not to a deserved retirement but to the knacker’s yard by the pigs he foolishly trusted. Don’t be like Squealer, who tried to explain away the brutal betrayal the next day: “The van had previously been the property of the knacker, and had been bought by the veterinary surgeon, who had not yet painted the old name out.” Don’t be Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, forced in the end to embrace power over ordinary love: “Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia!”

Stay decent and see Trump for what he is. In Orwell’s words,

Either power politics must yield to common decency, or the world must go spiralling down into a nightmare of which we can already catch some glimpses.

Have you glimpsed enough yet?

New On The Dishcast: Mark Halperin

Mark used to be the political director for ABC News and a senior political analyst at TIME magazine. He co-managed Bloomberg Politics and co-authored Game Change and Double Down: Game Change 2012. Last year he launched the interactive live-video platform 2WAY, where he serves as editor-in-chief and hosts “The Morning Meeting” and “2WAY Tonight.” He also hosts “Next Up with Mark Halperin” on Megyn Kelly’s MK Media platform. We chat about covering five presidents — from Clinton to Trump 2.0.

Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on the bygone era of bipartisanship, and Bill Clinton’s staggering talent. That link also takes you to listener comments on the pods with Fiona Hill, Charles Murray, Cory Clark, David Ignatius, and Karen Hao. Readers also discuss last week’s column on the MAGA crackup, “queer” dating culture, and much more. Check it out.

Money Quotes For The Week

“There is no insurrection or sedition without the use of force. Disobeying a lawful order is insubordination, not insurrection or sedition. Disobeying an unlawful order is required. That is all,” – Andy McCarthy, conservative lawyer.

“At first, the President said the tariffs would be paid for by foreigners. Then he said tariffs won’t raise prices. But now he says he’ll cut tariffs to lower prices for consumers. But the President won’t cut tariffs on Colombian and Brazilian imports because the President hates the Presidents of those countries, though over 75% of coffee comes from those countries,” – Erick Erickson. That’s about right.

“Republicans aren’t only losing elections, they’re consistently losing support on prices and the economy, in all polls, big or small, Republican or Democrat, over a several-month period. You can’t spin yourself out of reality,” – Jim VandeHei.

“So my poll numbers just went down, but with smart people they’ve gone way up,” – Donald Trump.

“My new all-girl punk band is called Quiet Piggy,” – Anka Radakovich.

“People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think,” – Aldous Huxley.

“I am open to almost any crackpot theory about anything. It’s just, on that subject [of 9/11 conspiracies] — come on, you know what I mean? It’s too much. Even for me!” – Tucker Carlson in 2012, calling his Infowars interviewer a “parasite” for pressing him.

“The official story is a lie,” – Tucker Carlson on his new video series, The 9/11 Files.

The View From Your Window

Zipolite, Mexico, 1.01 pm

Yglesias Award Nominees

“Speaker Johnson now says the Epstein files have to be watered down so we don’t ‘do permanent damage to the political system.’ Think about how f*cked that is. They’re more worried about protecting the system than exposing the predators,” – Ryan Fournier, chairman of Students for Trump.

“I would like to say, humbly, I’m sorry for taking part in the toxic politics; it’s very bad for our country. It’s been something I’ve thought about a lot, especially since Charlie Kirk was assassinated,” – Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Mental Health Break

A calming music video to pass the time:

In The ‘Stacks

• Tina Brown remains essential reading on Epstein. Fun too.
• The discharge petition is back with a populist vengeance.
• The case against Comey is cratering.
• Derek Thompson calls out Trump’s “neoliberal AI policy … almost globalist.”
• Michael Lind defends Trump against the “mercantilism smear.”
• Noah Smith explains “the economics theory that could have saved the Trump presidency.”
• Chris Rufo is optimistic that Vance can “manage the fractious right.”
• Nick Gillespie sits down with Rand Paul, one of the few principled Republicans left in Congress.
• Ruy Teixeira declares, “The Left’s 21st Century Project Has Failed.”
• The Dems’ “national security moms have emerged as an alternative to the populist wave,” writes Ken Klippenstein.
• The US medical establishment fails another big test on sex changes for kids.
• Freddie deBoer challenges the conventional wisdom on the skill of US students. Kelsey Piper responds to Freddie’s dissent over the bell curve.
• Jason Pargin throws cold water — i.e. physics — on the interstellar travel of sci-fi.
• In the Waymo race, red cities are pulling ahead of blue ones.
• When it comes to casual sex, why do men lower their standards and women raise theirs? Why are young men more open to dating and marriage than women are?
• Richard Hanania puts forth a “Mate Selection Theory of Feminization.”
• Julia Louis-Dreyfus is on Substack. All hail! Doubly so for Bruce Bartlett — a hero of the Dish from the Bush-Cheney years.

The View From Your Window Contest

Recommend The Weekly Dish to your readers

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,” – Orwell