In 1972, the Princeton University philosopher Peter Singer challenged us with a thought experiment of particular relevance today.
Imagine that, on the way to the office, you saw a child drowning in a pond. Would you think that you had to save the child? What if you were wearing a new suit and be late to a business conference because of the time it took to save the child? Would that affect your response?
Singer didn’t just have some putative child and passerby in mind. He meant that more affluent and privileged people and countries had a moral obligation to help those in need, be they individuals, groups or countries “drowning” in metaphorical ponds, especially if aid involved minimal discomfort, such as a ruined suit or late attendance at a meeting.
In today’s transactional Trumpian world, Singer and his good Samaritan would be suckers. Seen in this light, the question they failed to consider is: What’s in it for me? An ounce of moral satisfaction. At what cost?
The suit was probably worth several hundred dollars. Lateness could jeopardize your chances of getting a promotion. So a child dies? Big deal. All that matters is the deal! Besides, the child had “no cards.”
As Harry Lime tells his morally encumbered friend atop Vienna’s Great Ferris Wheel in the 1949 film “The Third Man,” “Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax: the only way you can save money nowadays.”
The cynical Lime fully understood the moral implications of his criminal behavior, selling fake penicillin in post-war Vienna. He didn’t pretend to be morally obtuse. He knew exactly what he was doing and was indifferent to the fate of the people whose lives he was destroying. His honesty, although distressing and not in the least exculpatory, was at least sincere.
Not so with America’s president and his supporters. They must know, deep in their hearts, that in slashing foreign aid, in deporting undocumented immigrants, in letting Elon Musk run amok and in cutting social services, they are diminishing the life chances of millions of needy people throughout the world — as well as in America.
But instead of accepting moral responsibility for the consequences of their actions, they claim that millions of victims represent a small price for the “golden age” that awaits us at the end of the rainbow.
This is where Trump and his acolytes differ from Harry Lime. Trump insists that he will revolutionize America and the world, ushering in utopia. No matter that his knowledge of America and the world is woefully limited. All that matters is that he is God’s emissary who naturally knows the truth about all. In contrast, Lime was no revolutionary, just a self-serving crook who plied his trade with a small circle of corrupt Viennese.
Like all revolutionaries, Trump has a fanatical following. They implicitly trust their leader, as the Germans did Adolf Hitler and as the Russians did Joseph Stalin. Vladimir Putin, also a revolutionary in his own way, enjoys widespread Russian support today. In all four cases, unwavering popular acclaim is grounded in a quasi-religious faith in the greatness of the Great Man and in his ability to make his country as great as he is. Unsurprisingly, there’s no arguing with true believers of this kind.
Such unalloyed hero worship does have moral consequences, however, as Singer might note. Germans bore responsibility, and perhaps even guilt, for World War II, the Holocaust and the slaughter of innocent Jews, Roma, Ukrainians, Poles and Belarusians. Russians bore responsibility if not guilt for the Gulag, the Great Terror and the Holodomor. And, like it or not, they bear responsibility if not guilt for Putin’s genocidal war against Ukraine.
Which brings us to Trump’s Cabinet, his advisors, and his Republican Party. The transactional morality they practice makes them all responsible if not guilty for every undernourished African child, for every Ukrainian death, for every American who has lost his or her job, income and future. Naturally, the MAGA movement’s guilt is far less than Trump’s, but, like the bloody stain on Lady Macbeth’s hands, it is there.
The problem with supporting a golden age uncritically is simple. If it turns into a stone age instead, you will be held — and will in fact be — responsible.
Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”