Dining with the Devil

Recent incidents of functionaries in the Trump administration being harassed in public or asked to leave restaurants have put me in mind of an incident in my own life.  In 2005, it fell to me to have dinner with John Yoo and his wife.  You may remember that John Yoo was a principal player in the preparation of the so-called “torture memos” that cobbled together a legal justification for the Bush administration’s torture program.

     This was one of the more surreal incidents in my life.  In my view, torture is among the lowest forms of human vileness.  I put torturers in the same moral category with child rapists and slavers; and while Yoo certainly hadn’t tortured anyone himself, he had provided legal cover for those who did.  And yet, he and his wife gave every appearance of being nothing more than innocuous yuppies committed to a thoroughly bourgeois life.  I couldn’t help but recall Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the “banality of evil.”

     We got through dinner without embarrassment, mostly by avoiding politics (at a conference on politics).  And the next night, Yoo and I gave lectures on the USA Patriot Act.  Although we disagreed profoundly on virtually every point that we discussed, we managed to get through the discussion without any overt insults.  And the audience was civil as well, even though virtually everyone listening was as much opposed to Yoo as I was.  Yoo commented on this civility to me in a private conversation, and gave the impression that he had not been so well-received on other campuses.

     The important thing to note about this “civility” is that it was reciprocal.  Despite a widespread conviction that Yoo represented a profoundly immoral position, we listened to his arguments carefully and responded with reasoned arguments of our own.   Yoo, for his part, did not follow VP Cheney’s example by accusing us of treason for criticizing the President.  He listened to our criticisms and responded in a civil manner.  In such an environment of reciprocity, it is possible even for people who disagree profoundly to seek common ground, and perhaps to find it.  

     Unfortunately, there is currently no such environment in the United States.   The rot had already begun when I crossed paths with John Yoo.  Dick Cheney, with his sullen, belligerent glare and his insistence that dissidents are traitors, was a kind of beta test for the Trump presidency.  President Trump and his minions have made invective and insult the heart and soul of their politics.  Trump has shown no willingness whatsoever to listen to his critics and questioners or to seek any sort of common ground with them.  Rather, those who question him  are derided as people of low IQ and their questions and criticisms are dismissed as stupid or dishonest; they are nothing but enemies of American “greatness,” whatever that is supposed to be.

     It should come as no surprise that many people have responded in kind; as the Bible says, “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”  (Galatians 6: 7, KJV)  What the Trump administration has sown is a profound lack of respect for the American people—those who live in the United States, as well as the citizens of all the other countries in America.  And while one might question Maxine Waters’ encouragement to “push back” through public shaming, she is certainly right to predict that we are going to see a lot more of this.  Trump and his minions are gong to have a truly bountiful harvest.