Opposing Donald Trump Is No Longer a Political Act

It’s a Duty

Several months ago I began to notice headlines and articles in the purportedly objective media that seemed to have abandoned the democratic norm of neutral, objective reporting. The headline of a recent lead article in the Washington Post, for instance, read:

At Mount Rushmore, Trump exploits social divisions, warns of ‘left-wing cultural revolution’ in dark speech ahead of Independence Day

It may not seem much these days, but the headline’s phrases “exploits social divisions” and “dark speech” are not neutral terms but judgments of the President’s behavior. Not long ago, I believed these to be inappropriate in news reports from the mainstream media.

In an editorial, a columnist’s opinion piece or a blog like this, of course, such judgments are appropriate, even essential, and I, certainly, have not hesitated to judge Trump’s actions. Until recently, however, I believed that judgment and opinion in objective news reporting were improper and simply did not belong in mainstream news outlets such as the Post, PBS or NPR. Impeccable sources of objective reporting, I believed, were essential to a functioning democracy. Anything less was a betrayal of our commitment.

I’ve changed my mind. Working against Donald Trump is no longer a political act; it’s a struggle for the soul of our democracy. We must not allow the President to destroy it by manipulating its fundamental norms. Donald Trump is not an element of our politics; he is an enemy of our politics. He threatens our nation.

Insistence that mainstream reporting remain objective is critical because it allows citizens to make their own judgments about policy and politicians in governance. But when an insistence upon that norm clouds citizen judgment, when it allows demagoguery to flourish, then the norm has become a tool of the demagogue.

It’s not trivializing the evil of Nazism, to notice that Germany in the early 1930s is an appropriate analogue to our current situation, not because Trump threatens to imprison his political enemies, not because he threatens to exterminate a people, but because Hitler, too, used the norms of democracy to destroy the democracy. To fail to condemn him was to collaborate with him. The analogy is not exact, of course, but the principle is appropriate: At some point we must step away from even our essential norms to fight that which threatens those very norms. Yes, we must override the norm judiciously: The mainstream media must not become propaganda organs, even against the President. They must not lie or obfuscate the truth. But they must name – and evaluate – what is happening. Trump is exploiting social divisions. He does give dark speeches. Under normal circumstances such editorializing judgments would be inappropriate in a news article. But we are in a new moment in our history and new standards apply.

Let us pray we can claw our norms back when the danger has passed.