Beneficence in the face of cruelty

And why it's our true superpower

I have yet to find any humor whatsoever in what Donald Trump is doing to our markets and economy. You and I know our country is in very bad hands, but here’s the truth: Donald Trump is a sham. He’s a bully who wants people to be afraid. If he can’t make you afraid of immigrants and trans people, he’ll do his damnedest to make you afraid of himself.

We should be mad rather than scared.

To lead a nation through these turbulent times, you need to have two things going for you:

1. You need an educated sense of how to take care of the United States and its people, and

2. You need strong enough convictions to hold steady against fierce pushback.

Donald Trump possesses neither. Donald Trump is a rudderless coward. He’s a big enough bully to instigate tariffs that send the entire global economy into a tailspin — but he’s too afraid to stand behind his actions in the face of pushback.

Trump sold voters the idea that tariffs are a quick and total fix for today’s economic pressures. What he truly believes is irrelevant at this point. It’s epically clear that everything he does or refuses to do is in his personal self-interest only, period, full stop. If he doesn’t want us to go through another Great Depression, it’s only because he doesn’t want the infamy that comes with causing it.

If he thought his policies were in the nation’s best interests, he’d stand by them. Whatever he imagined he would gain with his tariffs, what he actually got was an entire country that’s hopping mad at him, a global community that wants no part of him, and a stock market that is at its worst low since 1932. All of these scare him, just like germs.

What does he do? Usually he backpedals:

• He sent people to a violent prison in El Salvador without due process. Until he felt the pushback and said “we didn’t mean it. We did that by mistake.”

• He picked a battle with universities for control of their institutions. Until Harvard, followed by 200 other universities, pushed and he says “that was an accident.”

• He instituted tariffs, against the advice of everyone except Peter Navarro. Then Americans begin to hate him and China pushes back hard. Now the talk is about walking those tariffs back, thus injecting more uncertainty into a market that is already virtually spooked.

His backpedaling doesn’t mean he’ll bring anyone back from El Salvador or release the funding for Harvard, but it does give us a peek into his worst fears.

As a former psychotherapist, I truly believe that everything Donald Trump does, he does because he is, at his base, a very frightened, under-resourced little boy. No one has ever taken care of him, so he takes care of no one. He doesn’t even do a good job of taking care of himself. He equates bluster with power, so he makes a lot of noise and does a lot of irrational things to the people he is supposed to govern. He spends every waking moment protecting his fragile, hollow sense of self. He deserves his civil rights and the freedom to live in peace, but he does not belong anywhere near the levers of power.

People, the data is in. The evidence shows that Donald Trump will rough you all the way up if he thinks you’re afraid of him, or if he thinks he can unleash his more rabid followers to come terrorize you. In the face of consequences, he quivers. Donald Trump does not take well to confrontation. (Remember when he said he knew nothing about Project 2025?)

Will America survive? I don’t know, but I think so. We won’t be a world hegemon and may no longer be an empire, but that might do us a world of good. If we defeat the Trump regime, this time for good, the world may welcome us back if we come with humility. They aren’t going to trust us financially or geopolitically, but it’s in everyone’s interests to keep America alive.

While we spend generations repairing the damage done by Trump, let us consider what it will take to build democracy anew. We’ve discussed this often, but today I want to focus on what I believe is imperative.

What kind of nation do people want to live in?

People are the most self-destructive species on earth (with lemmings running a close second). We have to save each other from our own worst instincts. We as a people need to treat each other better — if for no other reason than we want ourselves to be safe.

It serves the interests of precisely no one to maintain a society that is riven with inequity and serious danger for whomever is marginalized. Even if I were Trump and cared about nothing but my own wealth and power, I would still be better off if my country was peaceful, just, and equitably prosperous. Despots like Trump have, throughout history, met their Waterloo by working too hard for too long against the interests of the common good.

I’ve spent my entire adulthood watching political and moneyed interests rigging everything from the law to the economy in order to serve some select group’s perceived self-interests. We need to do more than simply beat these people. We need to create a vision that shows them how they will be better off if they throw their lots with the common good. Paradoxically, we don’t do that by cooking up new incentives for voters. We do that by tuning in to what America needs and having a strategy for those needs to be met.

A vision of beneficence won’t spring up by itself. If it could, it would have done so by now. We have to have the humility to admit that, if left without guardrails, we are bound to re-create inequality, bigotry and self-serving power hoarders.

So, what kind of nation do we want to live in?

Most of us require certain core elements in order to thrive:

• Society must be peaceful and safe.

• Society must enable widely and fairly distributed opportunities to improve one’s life.

• Society has to do whatever the hell it takes to keep large masses of people from lunging at each other’s throats.

This image illustrates our present situation perfectly:

When the people stand up, the monopolists crash to the ground, along with all of their holdings. We, The People under the game board, are getting restless. It is only a matter of time until we rise up and the monopolists fall. Our current arrangement is dicey for absolutely everybody — even our enemies.

As of this moment, it is entirely possible that:

• You or your loved ones could be seized off the street and sent to a foreign prison without charge. The way due process works is that it has to cover everyone or it can’t cover anyone.

• Invisible structures that hold a society together could fall, plunging everyone and everything into chaos that could turn into a death spiral.

• Institutions of public and higher education could be rigged with curricula and regulations that systematically create the sense, if not the reality, of white nationalism.

This small sample of scary events is based on things that have already happened.

The Trump regime would have you believe that you are surrounded by monsters and predators that only they can protect you from. They will destroy social programs of all stripes because they hate giving free stuff to undeserving people. They will systematically target entire populations (today it’s immigrants and trans people, yesterday it was Jews) for removal, one way or another. They may not go as far as the Nazi gas chambers, but they will do what they can so that comfortable white people don’t have to deal with foreigners, or brown people, or gender diversity.

They do all this because it usually results in a short term windfall of power or money for themselves. We can now see with our own teary eyeballs where that can lead.

So what?

The first thing we need to do is stop politicking and start leading. (Someone, please alert the Democrats.) Voters need a vision, not a “new message.” In that vision, we are educated from a young age to understand our history in all its glory and infamy. We respect people enough to hold them responsible for themselves. The government services we offer, either to everyone or to vulnerable individuals, are in place to protect the common good. We’re wise enough to know that our problems were caused not by inequality, but by inequity. There will always be some people who are outliers because they’re rich while others are outliers because of their poverty. If our leaders keep their gaze fixed on the common good, there will be fewer outliers than we have today and they will be less extreme.

I’m definitely a liberal, but I really am not a bleeding heart. I don’t feel compelled to bail people out of jail or make space for someone who would do me harm. The kind of America I’m talking about has to:

• Employ its citizens

• Protect its citizens

• Ensure housing and healthcare

• Educate people

• Steward the environment

• Show meaningful compassion to foreigners who are caught in a diaspora or are in political danger.

A better word for what I’m talking about is beneficence. According to the A.I. on my Google machine, beneficence is defined as:

“…the ethical principle of acting in a way that benefits others, promoting their well-being and actively seeking to improve their lives.”

It’s not a zero-sum game, no matter what they tell you. That’s another Republican lie. It costs me nothing to live by the principle of beneficence. The strong among us are more likely to thrive and the vulnerable less likely to perish in a society that creates these conditions and keeps them in perpetuity. The reason we have a government is because people need life to be somewhat orderly and reliable. People need to protect themselves and each other from humans’ worst instincts. If Trump completely destroys government, we’ll just have to invent it all over again.

“Government” isn’t a thing, it is a social arrangement. Democracies are supposed to govern themselves. Governments create restraints for the same reason there are cribs for babies. We usually keep babies out of harm’s way because we care about them. Our government should serve the same purpose for us.

The Democratic Party needs to embody that, not just talk about it. Here’s what we can each do to get the ball rolling:

• In the absence of evidence to the contrary, assume people are doing their best. Even if it’s ill-fitting or inadequate.

• Remember that if we lived a day in the other person’s skin, their attitudes and behavior would suddenly make total sense.

• Make respect reciprocal.

• Talk early, often, and with people you don’t understand.

• Disengage before you get so mad that you go ballistic with ad hominem.

And always remember:

Take care of yourself.

Take care of each other.

Take care of this place.

Song of the Day

“Never Too Much Love” — The Impressions

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Keep on keepin’ on,

Cindy