Speaking to her hometown constituents last month, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) made a startling admission: “We are all afraid. ... I’m often very anxious about using my voice because retaliation is real.”
Murkowski’s confession illustrates a profound change in who we are. Following World War II, Americans took pride in themselves — seeing those who served, and the country they represented — as generous, good and decent.
While there were exceptions to that glorified image — think of the brutality shown to the civil rights demonstrators in 1965 at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., or the malfeasance and mendacity fomented by Richard M. Nixon during the Watergate Affair — Americans looked to the presidency for reassurance that their values remained intact.
And presidents did just that.
Gerald Ford projected an image of honesty combined with a humbleness born in the iconic photograph of a president toasting his English muffins for breakfast.
Jimmy Carter promised “a government that is as honest and decent and fair and competent and truthful and idealistic as are the American people.”
In 1984, Ronald Reagan reassured the citizens of Ireland that America was still “a nation comprised of good and decent people whose fundamental values of tolerance, compassion and fair play guide and direct the decisions of our government.”
Seeking the presidency in 2000, George W. Bush promised an administration whose ethos was a belief in “a God who calls us not to judge our neighbors but to love them.”
Today, that positive image of the presidency as a role model has been shattered.
In his 2025 Easter message on Truth Social, Donald Trump derided “the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters back into your Country.”
The demonization of those who represent “the other” — a well-known fatal flaw of populist movements — extends not only to immigrants, but to anyone who is seen as a member of the so-called “deep state.” A fired federal worker who served 24 years in the Army and was formerly employed as a cybersecurity specialist, told The Washington Post, “They’re treating us like the bad guys.”
At Trump’s first rally since winning the 2024 election, a Michigan crowd went wild after being shown a film of migrants bound in chains and placed inside metal cages at the CECOT prison in El Salvador.
Recently, three U.S. citizens ages 2, 4 and 7 were abruptly deported to Honduras, including one child who is suffering from Stage 4 cancer, who was deprived of medication and contact with doctors.
Writing in The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum observes there is an emerging stereotype of America: “Not the quiet American, not the ugly American, but the brutal American,” adding, “Whatever illusions Europeans ever had about Americans ... whatever fond memories of the smiling GIs who marched into European cities in 1945 ... those are fading fast.”
During her sermon at the Interfaith Service of Prayer for the Nation, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde beseeched Trump to have mercy on the most vulnerable. Budde’s sermon ignited an avalanche of criticism. Christian right nationalists, for example, highlighted what her detractors called “the sin of empathy.”
Americans sense something is amiss. A recent Pew Research Center survey found 47 percent agree that the way people behave in public is ruder than before the COVID-19 pandemic, including the 20 percent who believe it is a lot ruder.
It is not merely Trump who is at fault. After Trump’s 2025 address to Congress, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) reacted by publicly using the f-word, as did a few of her Democratic colleagues.
While those holding public office are obliged to be exemplars of public decency, social media must also shoulder the blame for our present state. Too often, things are said under the guise of an X handle or some other social media account that the perpetrator would likely never say to our faces. The goal is not merely to antagonize, but to inflame — in short, to go viral.
In April, Oklahoma City marked the 30th anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building that claimed 168 lives, including 19 children. The perpetrators of that heinous act hoped it would spawn a nationwide revolt against the federal government.
Instead, the response was quite different. Marking the anniversary, Bill Clinton referred to the “Oklahoma standard,” a resilience marked by “acts of service, honor and kindness.” In his moving address, Clinton said, “America needs you, and America needs the Oklahoma Standard.”
In his autobiography “Hope,” the late Pope Francis quoted a beautiful expression in “The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi”: “Know that courtesy is one of the attributes of God ... and courtesy is the sister of charity, which extinguishes hatred and conserves love.”
Francis concluded, “Much more courtesy is needed: starting with the family, starting with ourselves.”
Addressing journalists following his ascension to the papacy, Leo XIV called for “a different kind of communication,” one that “does not use aggressive words, does not follow the culture of competition and never separates the search for truth from the love with which we must humbly seek it.”
In 1954, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis.), who became famous by charging that the U.S. government was riddled with communists, accused the U.S. Army of tolerating lax security.
Attorney Joseph Welch, whose associate McCarthy had tarred with the communist label, responded to the scurrilous charge: “Have you no sense of decency, sir — at long last have you left no sense of decency?”
With that, McCarthy’s career ended.
In his marathon 25-hour filibuster speech, Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said that America faces a “moral moment [that] is going to define our country for years and years to come.”
In this “moral moment,” is there no sense of decency left? Who are we, and what kind of people do we want to be?
John Kenneth White is a professor emeritus at The Catholic University of America. His latest book is titled “Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism.”
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