One of the speakers who introduced the panel was Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma. He spoke feelingly and well, describing the impact it had on him as a small child to hear Corrie ten Boom speak about her family's role hiding Jewish neighbors from the Nazis. He told us of the need to show moral courage, when it really counted. He asked us to ponder: What would we have done, if we were called upon to stand up for what was right, even at risk to ourselves?
This event happened to coincide with the week of Senate impeachment. Later that day, after speaking to us, Lankford cast his vote with all the rest of his party—excepting Romney—to acquit Trump of all charges.
Oh, Senator. Truly, to borrow some lines from Byron, you are a:
feeble tenant of an hour,
Debas'd by slavery, or corrupt by power,
Who knows thee well, must quit thee with disgust,
Degraded mass of animated dust!
Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,
Thy tongue hypocrisy, thy words deceit,
By nature vile, ennobled but by name,
And so on. The fact that Lankford can somehow sleep at night, bearing in his mind the cognitive dissonance of addressing an audience of persecuted people from around the world, without lifting a finger to oppose the most anti-refugee president in modern history... the fact that he does not notice the irony of applauding the moral courage of people who risked their lives during the Holocaust, when he is not willing to even slightly and temporarily endanger a Senate seat...
But then, perhaps, as some of the "moderate Republicans" in the Senate hinted, Trump has already been chastened enough by the impeachment process not to require any further rebuke or removal from office. Perhaps he has mended his ways, he has learned his lesson and will never do it again.
Tell that to Colonel Vindman and his twin brother, both given the ax immediately after Trump's acquittal, and marched out of the office as part of Trump's post-impeachment purge - his Nixon-esque "Friday night massacre."
Lankford, it was your vote, and the vote of everyone like you, that made this behavior possible. Trump will do it, keep doing it, for as long as people like you remain silent.
Moral courage is something we are forever just about to get around to, one of these days. It is something we like to project into the future. "What would I do, if something terrible happened in our time?" Never contemplating that it might be happening right here, now. That the great moment in which one is called and tested might be directly in front of you.
We contemplate moral courage when we assume we will not be punished for it. When we can take for granted we will triumph and be celebrated for our actions. Yet that is precisely not when courage is demanded. It is in the nature of tyranny to be in the ascendant, "forever on the throne," and "truth forever on the scaffold," to quote King/James Russell Lowell. Vindman has certainly been sent to the metaphorical scaffold, simply for telling the truth under subpoena. To resist tyranny involves precisely taking the risk that one might have to sacrifice and suffer, in some measure, for doing so.
Vindman, unlike Lankford, was willing to take that risk. He was willing to show moral courage by his actions, not just in empty words.
Meanwhile, Trump remains on his throne, having purged the few honest men who challenged him, and he will be even crueler, even more corrupt, in future, now that he has realized he will never be punished for it. On that score, let us close with some lines by the English war poet Isaac Rosenberg:
In his malodorous brain what slugs and mire, [...]
His body lodged a rat where men nursed souls.
The world flashed grape-green eyes of a foiled cat
To him. On fragments of an old shrunk power,
On shy and maimed, on women wrung awry,
He lay, a bullying hulk, to crush them more.
But when one, fearless, turned and clawed like bronze,
Cringing was easy to blunt these stern paws,
And he would weigh the heavier on those after.
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