A Clash of Values

The other day I was in the Charleston airport, and one of the TSA supervisors, who I talk with every time I travel there, said that he is trying to keep his head up. It was 4:30am. “We have to come in and try to smile,” he said. “But we have bills to pay, food to put on the table, mortgages.” He then told me, with a smile, to have a safe flight. Imagine. He has no idea when his next paycheck will come. And because of that reality, many of his colleagues in the federal workforce now find themselves in food pantry lines.

Ours is a time of cruelty and selfishness.

No better example of this can be found than the Trump administration’s refusal to fund SNAP. I keep repeating in my head and to anyone that will listen that these people will allow Americans to go hungry, because they want to cut healthcare to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. It is sick.

The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court to grant a stay of a lower court’s order to pay full food stamp benefits in November. The administration argued that to fully fund the program could result in budgetary problems for other child nutrition programs later in the year. I don’t believe them. They lie like they breathe. Instead, they are using hunger as a cudgel to beat Democrats into submission.

Imagine that: the President of the United States appealed to the highest court in the land to allow him to starve millions of Americans, because they want to force Democrats to allow cuts to healthcare to pay for tax cuts for billionaires.

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All the while his richest supporters gathered at Mar-a-Lago for a Halloween Party with a “Great Gatsby” theme. Decadence on full display. His administration found $40 billion to loan to Argentina but refuses to fund SNAP. His billionaire friends are making money hand over fist. Reports have it that Elon Musk is on the cusp of becoming the world’s first trillionaire. But the Trump administration wants to give them more.

Something is broken here.

ICE raided a daycare center and snatched up a teacher in front of babies. Detained a nonverbal teenaged boy. Arrested an American citizen and, as they drove off in his car, effectively kidnapped his child strapped in the backseat. With all this happening every day and with their willingness to let Americans starve (the Trump administration is now demanding that states “undo” any action to provide full food stamps), the values of Trump and his enablers are on full display. Greed, selfishness, and hatred abound and animate public policy aimed at destroying the country as we know it and at remaking it in the image of those with corrupted souls.

Ours is also a time of the clash of values.

They would have us believe that Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect in New York City, poses the greater threat (an echo of the post-war effort to hold off fascism and communism at the same time and defend what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called the “vital center.”) Mamdani’s victory speech, The Washington Post editorial board wrote, unmasked his true intention. “Across 23 angry minutes laced with identity politics and resentment, Mamdani abandoned his cool disposition and made clear that his view of politics isn’t about unity.” They shuddered at his declaration that “We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.” These words cast an ominous shadow over liberty and freedom, they seem to believe. But those words have become synonyms for selfishness these days.

Any serious concern about the lives of ordinary people, about the most vulnerable among us, threatens the security of the richest of the rich. They shout about the dangers of class warfare and identity politics when Trump and his supporters engage in both every single day. Meanwhile, hardworking people can barely keep their noses above water. And the most vulnerable among us will go hungry, because Trump wants to give billionaires more money.

I am not interested in political labels or ideologies. I can give less than a damn if someone identifies as a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, or as a Democratic Socialist. Those are political shorthands aimed at doing the thinking for us. I am more concerned about what values shape your view of the world, and I am sick and tired of selfishness, greed, and hatred standing in for what matters most in this country. We are running unimaginable deficits in decency because of it all.

Love and justice matter most to me, and that isn’t some abstract idea. It involves, not as a matter of charity, something basic: you don’t let people go hungry!

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