Editor’s (admin’s) note: A copy of my email, with necessary links and edits, in advance of this month’s appointment with my spiritual director, giving her a heads-up on what I’d been journaling on since our last meeting and, more to the point, helping me focus over time by archiving the emails with my journals on this blog. This month’s focuses on the widespread reaction (which I fully shared) to President Trump’s bullyingof Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
Sat, Jul 12, 10:10 PM
Hi Sister —
Here’s my usual note to confirm our session Monday, and to update you on what I’ve been up to spiritually in the past month. (Not much, I’ve got to admit!) There’s so much going on — and so much of it, especially at the national level, is so threatening — I’m feeling overwhelmed by it all, and it’s difficult to keep up.
TypicaIly it goes like this. I’ll get a halfway decent first draft under way and post it to my blog, but when I come back to it the next day some new outrage is all over the headlines and whatever I’d started writing was stale, yesterday’s news — no matter whether it was immigration, tariffs, Gaza, the militarization of ICE or blustery threats to “take over” New York City, Los Angeles and/or invade Greenland. I must have eight to 10 unfinished drafts in my software.
Not a word of it ready to uplink, though!
Sometimes a little writer’s block is a good thing — and I stronly suspect this is one of those times. At least insofar as politics is concerned.
The last couple, three months I’ve been increasingly worried about the direction the federal government is taking, and what I can — or should — do to try to fight it. I’ve followed politics all my life, and I’m used to seeing things that strike me as foolish, ill-conceived, counterproductive or just bad public policy. But I haven’t seen very much in all those years that’s just flat-out *wrong* — immoral. (I’m a pretty middle-of-the-road guy.) Now, since Jan. 20, I’ve seen very little, at least from the federal government, that doesn’t. violate my basic ethical standards. Love thy neighbor. Walk humbly. Show mercy. Seek justice. The list goes on.
I’m a historian by education and training, and I don’t use words like “fascist” lightly. (It’s more fun to quibble over historical analogies with other academics.) But I seriously believe we’re on the road to a fascist coup in America. I have resisted this thought for more than a year now — I’ve wanted to make sure it wasn’t just “Trump degrangement syndrome” or partisan political rhetoric. But the conclusion is unescapable. And I now agree with Timothy Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiat and other scholars who say Trump is well on the way to an authoritarian, fascist coup d’état.
David Brooks, a commentator for PBS whom I like, said something about moral injury a few months ago that sums up my new way of thinking. It was on the NewsHour show just after Trump humiliated the President Velenskyy of Ukraine Feb. 28 in the Oval Office. Brooks represents a kind of traditional Burkeian conservatism that has never appealed very much to me, but he speaks of Christian values in light of his Jewish heritage in ways I always find instructive. So I listened up as he said:
[…] Donald Trump believes in one thing. He believes that might makes right. And, in that, he agrees with Vladimir Putin that they are birds of a feather. And he and Vladimir Putin together are trying to create a world that’s safe for gangsters, where ruthless people can thrive. And we saw the product of that effort today in the Oval Office.
I first started thinking, is it — am I feeling grief? Am I feeling shock, like I’m in a hallucination? But I just think shame, moral shame. It’s a moral injury to see the country you love behave in this way. [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/brooks-and-capehart-on-the-implications-of-trumps-altercation-with-zelenskyy].
I was already halfway familiar with moral injury, i.e. “an injury to an individual’s moral conscience and values resulting from an act of perceived moral transgression on the part of themselves or others” (per Wikipedia). But I associated it with combat veterans and first responders, not with ordinary citizens when they believe their governments violate basic standards of right and wrong. With people like me, in other words.
So far the moral dilemma comes to me in the form of questions. Am I complicit when my elected government sides with Russia against Ukraine and Western Europe? When it defunds USAID, Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services? Interferes with vaccinations and medical research? Or when my government brags about “mass deportation” and expands ICE into a domestic paramilitary police force?
You don’t have to be a historian to see where *that* can lead.
And, yes, I’m afraid we’re all complicit. The question becomes: What am I going to do about it? I can’t yet believe this coup will take place unopposed. And there are some stirrings of resistance, some from the legal profession, even from Haifa Law School in Israel) some of the churches. (I’ve blogged about this, HERE and HERE.) I certainly haven’t given up hope, and I’m keeping my eyes open for ways I might be helpful.
OK, OK. I’ll get off my soapbox now.
Anyway, a lot of my reading these days addresses that second question. The consensus among scholars. whom I respect is abundanty clear that we’ve devolving, at least on the national level, into some kind of homegrown fascism. But they also say there are still things we can do to counter some of its worst effects. Can do? That we must do.
See you Monday at 6. Hopefully I’ll have a bit of good news (in the form of an uneventful CT scan) to share. So it won’t *all* be a political rant.
— Pete
[Uplinked July 16, 2025]
Ordinary Time 
This is the question all Christians need to be asking. So far I have been pulled into more prayer. A dear friend gives clothing to the homeless through her church. I am certain God has a specific call on each of us right now if we only listen.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A lot to think about in your question! In all reading I’ved done about moral injury, the answers that make the most sense, at least to me, are the small things we can do, ideally through our parishes or another local community. Like your friend who donates used clothing. (I should go through my closets, come to think of it!) At least locally, we can make a difference.
LikeLike