The Age Of Trade-Offs

Talk of political trade-offs is all the rage These Days.

The Trump Administration seems to be heading the economy straight into a recession. And, because no one wants to be in the position of having people think that they vaporized trillions of dollars in a matter of weeks on accident, they’re at pains to convince us all that they’re doing it on purpose … you know, for the greater good.

Relatedly, a couple of weeks – or possibly a thousand years, it’s getting hard to tell – ago Secretary Bessent helpfully reminded us that “Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American Dream.” This is an interesting comment from the administration swept into office by the explicit promise that the price of eggs would go down if we just stopped treating trans folks and immigrants like people.

Perhaps not shockingly, none of this is working out. But rest assured: this is all just an elaborate system of trade-offs orchestrated by our definitely-a-very-good-businessman president.

Of course, this raises the question of what we are trading economic stability for? What deeper features of the American Dream, what grander dreams, are they offering us at the low price of $10 a dozen?

From what I can see all they appear to be offering in trade is meanness. The rolling attacks on trans rights; the assault on the notion that anyone other than white men have had any historical role in the American dream; the efforts to make our communities actively hostile to migrants; all of these evince an attitude to the world that sees nastiness for its own sake as a virtue.

Of course, they, in their deranged – and petty sense of “manly firmness” – don’t see it that way. To their minds, they are ushering in a Brave New [Old] World. And they, not unlike their ideological predecessors-in-interest, have sold themselves and others on the idea that they alone have the courage to do what needs to be done. And if that means that some people are going to suffer a bit, then God wills it … Can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs [assuming you can afford them.

But we fail to see this for what it is at our own peril. The core of the American Dream has always been that we could create a space for poets and dreamers and builders and saints to practice the highest reaches of what humanity can achieve.

Yet, what the Trump Administration is offering is nothing short of a war on the act of humanity itself.

To illustrate what I mean, consider the move to enforce immigration laws and execute arrests in churches and schools. The church and the schoolhouse are the two public spaces – one religious, the other secular, but both meaningfully sacred – that are dedicated to the practice of unrestrained humanity towards our fellow travelers. And both have come under particular attack in These Days.

Of course, laws have to be enforced. And as citizens we, regardless of whether those in charge think this is important, have to take our obligations to follow the law seriously.

At the same time, the people who work in these institutions – the teachers, the counselors; the priests, the pastors, the deacons, and nuns – are all faced with the fact of a worried mother, a crying child, of people coming to them for safety and solace where they can just be. For these people, the facts of the world and their devotion to their professions – to practicing their humanity – mean more than performing their obligations as citizens.

Of course, doing so is not without risk. That has always been the trade-off when dedicating one’s life to humanity. And that bravery to be humane is found most often the ones you’d least expect.

But as a matter of public and moral policy, we have long held that we would recognize that commitment and not force that horrible choice on people; that we would stay the hand of Eichmannesque legalism in these small, innocent spaces.

Now, in this Age of Trade-offs, we are being asked to trade the bravery to be humane for the bravery to be cruel.

That does not seem like a trade worth making.