"THE APPALLING SILENCE" OF TOO MANY "GOOD PEOPLE" / FEAR AND LOATHING IN TRUMP'S AMERICA _ THE HILL 18.01.2026  

#AppallingSilence #GoodPeople  #FearAndLoathingInTrumpsAmerica #DonaldTrump  #GlennCAltschuler #DavidWippman #FearAndLoathingInArmandonia #Armandonia #FearAndLoathingInEstonia #KumariImedemaa  #ShadowWarfare #TeedeniAiaSalaarhiiv #NoliMeTangere #Meestemoemuuseum #GentlemensFloralCabinet #ExcavanzaKomatsu #TheVendelFiles #PerversionOfJustice #TheKirblaMethod #MEEZ072026

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/5693180-hate-taught-trump-policies/ 

In the iconic musical “South Pacific,” Lieutenant Joseph Cable comments on the prejudices he was raised to internalize: “You’ve got to be taught/ To hate and fear/ You’ve got to be taught from year to year. … You’ve got to be carefully taught.”  

Unlike Cable, President Trump never shed that lesson. A case in point: At the memorial service for her husband, political activist Charlie Kirk, Erika Kirk declared she would forgive his killer “because it was what Christ did. The answer to hate is not hate.” Trump, describing Kirk’s assassin as a “radical, cold-blooded killer” encouraged by left-wing fanatics, said, “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.”

Trump practices what he preaches. On issue after issue, his administration has adopted gratuitously hurtful policies, and is often contemptuous of long-standing legal, social and political norms. Although officials frequently invoke deterrence and national security as justifications, the pattern is clear: Trump uses cruelty and intimidation to induce compliance, regardless of who gets hurt.

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The long list of deliberately inhumane policies continues to grow, even though a recent poll shows that 61 percent of Americans think the U.S. should be a moral leader. Only 39 percent believe it actually is, down from 60 percent in 2017.

Thus, the “ultimate tragedy,” to paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., may not be “the oppression and cruelty” of “bad people,” but “the appalling silence” of too many “good people.” Even though the vast majority of Americans have not been “carefully taught to hate and fear,” many have chosen to go along to get along.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. David Wippman is emeritus president of Hamilton College.

THE HILL: 

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/5693180-hate-taught-trump-policies/ 

Opinion>Opinions - White House
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Fear and Loathing in Trump’s America
Comments:by Glenn C. Altschuler and David Wippman, opinion contributors - 01/18/26 8:00 AM ET 

In the iconic musical “South Pacific,” Lieutenant Joseph Cable comments on the prejudices he was raised to internalize: “You’ve got to be taught/ To hate and fear/ You’ve got to be taught from year to year. … You’ve got to be carefully taught.”

Unlike Cable, President Trump never shed that lesson. A case in point: At the memorial service for her husband, political activist Charlie Kirk, Erika Kirk declared she would forgive his killer “because it was what Christ did. The answer to hate is not hate.” Trump, describing Kirk’s assassin as a “radical, cold-blooded killer” encouraged by left-wing fanatics, said, “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.”


Trump practices what he preaches. On issue after issue, his administration has adopted gratuitously hurtful policies, and is often contemptuous of long-standing legal, social and political norms. Although officials frequently invoke deterrence and national security as justifications, the pattern is clear: Trump uses cruelty and intimidation to induce compliance, regardless of who gets hurt.

In September, the U.S. military attacked a speedboat allegedly carrying narcotics off the coast of Venezuela. When two men were seen clinging to the overturned hull, a second strike killed them.

Trump insisted the attack, which critics consider murder, was intended “to serve notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States. BEWARE!” The goal, added Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was to make would-be traffickers fear “the reaper.” But no evidence suggests the strikes are deterring the fishermen and farmers recruited to crew these boats, and killing them eliminates opportunities to collect intelligence on drug trafficking networks.

The prejudice that Cable described is most visible in immigration policy.

During Trump’s first term, his administration separated thousands of immigrant children from their families. On the first day of his second term, Trump dismantled the task force working to this day to reunite them with their families. He also signed executive orders intended, as the National Immigration Law Center put it, “to terrify and devastate immigrants, their families, and communities” through mass expulsions, revocation of birthright citizenship for millions of immigrant children, and use of the military to maximize detentions and arrests, even of long-time residents.

In a move “breathtaking in scope and cruelty,” Trump halted the U.S refugee resettlement program and closed the border to asylum seekers. And after an Afghan man killed two National Guard members in November, the administration threatened thousands of Afghan refugees with deportation, including many who had risked their lives to support U.S. forces in Afghanistan and face torture and death if they return.


In March 2025, the administration illegally deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man living in the United States who, like tens of thousands of other immigrants arrested by ICE, had never been charged with a crime.

Abrego was sent to CECOT, El Salvador’s mega-prison known for brutal treatment of inmates. After acknowledging his deportation was an “administrative error,” the administration refused to seek his return, even after the Supreme Court directed the government to “facilitate” it. When Abrego was returned to the U.S. to face smuggling charges, ICE threatened to deport him to Uganda. A federal judge ordered him released pending further proceedings.

On Christmas Day 2024, Trump suggested that 37 men whose death sentences had been commuted by former President Biden should “GO TO HELL!” After taking office, Trump transferred many of them to a federal supermax facility in which every prisoner is held in solitary confinement, overriding federal policy basing assignments on inmates’ health and whether they pose security risks or threats to others.


During the first week of his second term, Trump banned transgender Americans from serving in the military, abruptly ending the careers of thousands of soldiers honorably serving their country. Other orders moved transgender women into men’s prisons and threatened to defund hospitals providing gender-affirming care to minors.

In December, the administration froze $185 million in funds to Minnesota day care centers based on allegations, magnified by MAGA podcasters, of fraud by Somali immigrants, a community Trump derided as “garbage” and “lowlifes.” In January, the administration used similar allegations as a pretext to freeze $10 billion for child care, social services and support for hundreds of thousands of low-income families in five Democratic-led states, a move temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

The cruelest cut of all may be last year’s shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which supported a vast range of health, development and humanitarian relief programs. The administration claimed, falsely, that the agency funneled “massive sums” to “ridiculous” bureaucratic “pet projects.” Established in 1961, USAID has, in fact, saved tens of millions of lives worldwide. Closing USAID may cost some 14 million people their lives by 2030.


The long list of deliberately inhumane policies continues to grow, even though a recent poll shows that 61 percent of Americans think the U.S. should be a moral leader. Only 39 percent believe it actually is, down from 60 percent in 2017.

Thus, the “ultimate tragedy,” to paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., may not be “the oppression and cruelty” of “bad people,” but “the appalling silence” of too many “good people.” Even though the vast majority of Americans have not been “carefully taught to hate and fear,” many have chosen to go along to get along.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. David Wippman is emeritus president of Hamilton College.