Examining friendships with Trumpers

In an Atlantic podcast conversation last week, David Frum asked Anne Applebaum, "How do you cope with people whom you once held dear going off in these bad paths?" — by which he meant, collectively, Trumpism. It's a common question batted between Most Right Anti-Trumpers, and Ms. Applebaum walks right up to my line.

I know some people are better at separating their political views and their private lives than I am.... I have found it difficult because this story comes so close to, I want to say, values that I hold but also values that I thought all of us shared. The people who I know and who I consider to be friends, I think of them as people who believe in the rule of law, who support the Constitution, who think a democratic political system is better, who are bothered by lying in politics. We don’t have to have the same views about everything, but there are kind of basic values that we share, and I’ve discovered that that’s not true. And I find it now difficult to deal with people who now live in this other reality.

I'm 95% with Applebaum. As a student of American political and cultural history I must say that when reading extensively into the country's past, one is apt to become cynical about its much-vaunted "values." From America's original sin of slavery to (now-attenuated) prejudice against the transgendered, our historical faults, flaws and national crimes march on, page after dreadful page.

Yet America's efforts to redress past wrongs have also soldiered on, and its post-WWII global leadership established a vital, stable international order and offered a robust defense of Western civilization and all that should come with it. Lord knows we've blundered at times, but all in all the United States has been a force for good far more often than for serious mischief — and that offers the soul a considerable uplift.

But today, in America's post-presidential, kleptocratic autocracy, we get nothing but gut-punches. My most painful yet was delivered by former U.S. Court of Appeals judge T. Michael Luttig in this brief passage:

For the almost 250 years since the founding of this nation, America has been the beacon of freedom to the world because of its democracy and rule of law. Our system of checks and balances has been strained before, but democracy—government by the people—and the rule of law have always won the day. Until now, that is. America will never again be that same beacon to the world, because the president of the United States has subverted America’s democracy and corrupted its rule of law.

The essence of Luttig's words was of course nothing new to me, but that they came from the pen of a such a distinguished, deeply respected and conservative federal judge damn near inflicted the sensation of an actual punch to my gut. My stomach sank, at least, on reading the words I bolded.

Judge Luttig's searing observation is also the reason for my 5% difference with Applebaum, who, to refresh, said "I find it difficult to deal with [friends] who now live in this other reality" of sinister Trumpism. I'd find it not one bit difficult, since I would disown them as friends and shun them as traitors to their country. Indeed, Applebaum herself explains just how wretchedly dishonorable the behavior of Trumpers has been:

When you chose [Trump] in 2024, you chose someone who had broken the law in multiple ways, and you knew it. You chose someone who sought to overthrow the results of the election of 2020, and you knew it. You were choosing someone who you knew to be lawless, who you knew had disdain for American institutions.

If a person of such low, despicable character is also the person you call your friend, then it seems to me you might be a superb candidate for membership in organized crime — a real "wise guy," an authentic "good fella," to use Henry Hill's moniker. Because in a more spine-chilling way, your friend is a member of a nationwide crime syndicate.

One other selection of insight from Applebaum, this regarding the can't-be-soon-enough post-Trump era:

It’s going to be very hard to turn around and say, That was wrong. They will stick to this. They will go stand by it. They will find new reasons to support Trump, precisely because it was such a bad choice, and precisely because they had to overcome their own internal doubts, and precisely because they know he broke the law, and precisely because they know he has disdain for things that they say that they value.

Indeed the cringeworthy heels-digging has already arrived. Moments ago, I read this in The Bulwark, from Jonathan Last:

On Monday [the publication's publisher and focus-grouper Sarah Longwell] and I talked about Trump’s Qatari air palace and I asked if she thought this $400 million gift might "break through" with voters.

I hated myself the minute the words were out of my mouth.

A final word, my dear, excessively gracious Anne Applebaum. You say you "worry that it’s going to be very hard to make up with them at some point in the future." My worry is that you and millions of others like you will try. Were the year 1792 and in London you happened to bump into Benedict Arnold, would you give him a grand hail-fellow-well-met?