Silence Is Not Golden

Unless you are a biologist, or perhaps work in the healthcare industry, you are likely unaware of the tremendous amount of work that goes on all the time to keep your body alive and well. When all the systems are functioning as they should, we have the luxury of ignoring them. They operate in concert without much conscious input from us. Sure, you have to feed your body nutritious food, get enough sleep, exercise, and avoid obvious hazards, but you don’t really need to understand how your immune system interacts with your lymphatic system, or how your hormones affect digestion. All those kinds of functions happen in the background — and that’s as it should be in a healthy individual.

It is only when something goes wrong that you need to really think about all these systems. Autoimmune disease runs in my family, so I have been witness to the havoc that can occur when bodily systems become disregulated. It is not fun. And more than that, it is incredibly difficult to figure out the mechanisms causing the problems, and to correct them without triggering other problems.

I think it’s useful to think of our nation right now as a disregulated body — in essence, a profoundly ill patient whose complex, interconnected systems are no longer working as they should.

Trump and the whole know-nothing, primacy-of-consciousness MAGA movement are like a cancer in the body politic. They have been eating away at the institutions that have allowed America to be a mostly-free and incredibly prosperous nation. And so many, especially on “the Right,” have been under-reacting. They remain silent as this administration erodes the norms and institutions on which we all rely.

I imagine some are embarrassed to face the reality that they voted for and have often defended a man who is clearly mentally, intellectually, and spiritually unwell (in the past week alone, we’ve had Trump’s disastrous “peace deal” with Iran and the spectacle of an IFC fight on the White House lawn). Some still cling to the idea that Harris would have been worse, that “the Left” is such an existential threat that Trump was (is) our only option. Some are simply exhausted, numb to the injustices being perpetrated daily due to the sheer volume and idiocy of it all. But some, I think, are akin to the cancer patient who refuses chemotherapy or radiation because it will damage healthy tissue. They fear that any attack on Trump or MAGA will weaken the “healthy” tissue of conservatism. We’ll get back to them in a moment.

First, for those who remain silent out of embarrassment over their past support of Trump: get over it. Everyone makes mistakes, and you are simply compounding the mistake by refusing to admit it. You probably fear you will be judged harshly—and you will be. You screwed up. BUT it takes a lot of courage and integrity to admit you were wrong, and good people will judge you for this as well, not just for your mistakes.

For those clinging to the idea that a Harris presidency would have been worse: who cares? That’s an unprovable thought experiment and does nothing to address the mess we’re in now. Arguing that cancer is a “better” illness than heart disease is pretty silly when you’re currently dying from the malignancy.

To those who are simply exhausted: I get it. I feel that way too sometimes. Unfortunately, cancer doesn’t stop spreading because you’re tired of fighting it. Of course, you can’t fight every minute of every day. You need to continue living your life and finding joy and happiness where you can. And sometimes you DO need to take a break. But if you want to survive and return to health, you ultimately need to find the emotional reserves to continue the fight. The same is true when fighting for the survival of the body politic.

Lastly, to those who keep silent because they don’t want to empower the Left or further damage the Right: MAGA has already irreparably damaged conservatism. I warned this would happen back in 2016. Conservatives hitched their wagon to a two-bit con man who has opened the door to every grifter and crackpot imaginable. I don’t know how you put that genie back in the bottle. So, yes, Republicans are going to lose elections and it’s going to be a long time before they are taken seriously by anyone with a working brain. But keeping silent isn’t going to change that or make that better. It just means you will likely be left out of the conversation when (if) the sane remnants of the party begin to reconstitute a movement around free markets, limited government, and the rule of law — you know, the ideas that conservatives used to champion.

While there are limits to how far the analogy can be usefully stretched, I see every citizen in a free country as part of the immune response of the body politic. And those who aren’t vigorously defending against attacks on the free press, the normalization of conspiracy theories, government agencies being used to punish political enemies, and the myriad other violations of the Constitution, are failing in their job. I don’t believe the sickness in our body politic is terminal yet. But by under-reacting to the threat, those who remain silent are increasing the chance that this cancer will continue to grow and will ultimately kill the patient (i.e., our republic). Yes, it is possible to overreact to a malignancy and trigger a devastating autoimmune response. Obviously, we should try not to do that! But the much greater risk is too weak an immune response, which allows the cancer to continue to spread.

You should not speak up out of guilt or out of duty. You should speak up because living in a free country is an enormous value to your life. You should denounce authoritarianism (whether from the Left or the Right) because it is in your self-interest to do so. Ayn Rand wrote (in her article “What Can One Do?”): “Do not keep silent when your own ideas and values are being attacked. If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the fault of those who keep silent.”