The Inverted Moral Universe

 In a recent post on this blog, I was observing how frankly incomprehensible the Republican moral universe is to me—even among the branches of the GOP that are still relatively "mainstream." We had some further illustrations of this over the past week. Take, for instance, the passage of a long-overdue spending package to fund the government. On the one hand, this was great news—the looming government shutdown was averted. This was hailed as a victory for the "normal" branch of the GOP, which ultimately opted to govern rather than to sabotage the state (and for this, they have been pilloried ever since by their own even more radical right-wing flank). 

Yet, if you look at the details of the spending bill, you see how utterly weird even the "normal" side of the party is. After all, they needed to negotiate for a few "wins" for their side, in order to justify their policy compromises to their base. But what were the "wins" of which they were so proud? The New York Times notched the policy victories on both sides, in dispassionate prose. Republican negotiators, they noted, were proud of the fact that they had expanded ICE detention capacity and cut off humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees. Democratic negotiators, meanwhile, were proud that they had funded Alzheimer's research. The contrast could not be more stark. 

Highlighting the Republican "wins" listed in the article, a friend of mine sent me an email. "Wow," he observed, sarcastically: "what great legislative 'achievements' for the Republicans." Apparently, one side wants to fund research into combatting the worst human diseases. The other is crowing about the fact that they cut off humanitarian aid to a civilian population displaced by war. (I get, by the way, that there are valid concerns about the specific UN agency distributing this aid—but in the face of famine, it's not clear that there are any alternatives; and the result of cutting off aid wholesale seems like it can only be even more civilian misery and death in Gaza). 

Looking down the list of other GOP "achievements" in the spending bill, they all have this same character. They are either mean-spirited, or just frankly petty and trivial-minded: or, more often still, a combination of both: in addition to cutting off aid to starving Palestinians in the midst of a looming famine, and expanding the number of beds to detain asylum-seekers in prison-like conditions, after all, Republican negotiators were also apparently crowing about how they had "saved" gas stoves and had secured a prohibition on U.S. embassies flying rainbow flags. These are the top priorities for our "normal" Republicans, ladies and gents. The perfect combination of ludicrous and mean at the same time. 

But what really gets me is the line one keeps hearing about Ukraine aid. Now, one is accustomed, by this point, to the weirdness and creepiness of the pro-Putin GOP "isolationists" who simply oppose all Ukraine aid. They are off on their own ideological planet, and have been for some time now. But what sketches me out even more is how even the GOP "hawks"—the ones who are supposedly more sympathetic to Ukraine—feel the need to clarify that they don't support any merely humanitarian aid to Ukraine's victimized civilian population. I quoted in the earlier post from Sen. Joni Ernst on this topic: "I’m all about weapons, not welfare." That's the positioning of Team Normal in the GOP at this point. 

And now, this week, we've heard more of the same. An article in the New York Times yesterday described Speaker Mike Johnson's efforts to rally support for Ukraine aid in the GOP. He clarifies at one point that he is trying to gain support by drawing a clear distinction between "lethal aid" and other forms of aid. "There is a big distinction in the minds of a lot of people between lethal aid for Ukraine, and the humanitarian component," he is quoted as saying. 

Now, in a recognizable moral universe, that would mean that people who unreservedly support humanitarian aid to Ukraine had some concerns about spending more money on bombs and missiles that would be used to kill people (even if it were in the service of a just and purely defensive war). But that's not what Johnson means. He's referring to the Joni Ernst-type of talking point quoted above. What he means is that many members of his conference support Ukraine aid, but only if it is provided in the form of "lethal aid," and not if it is in the form of "humanitarian aid." They want bombs, not food. They want "weapons, not welfare," in Ernst's immortal phrase. 

I was reminded of a poem by Robert Lowell, in which he reflects back on his time during the Second World War, when he was imprisoned for being a pacifist and conscientious objector. He recounts meeting another inmate, with whom he has an interchange about what each of them is "in for." The other inmate says that he was imprisoned for "killing." Lowell, as the poem's speaker, observes that he has been imprisoned for "refusing to kill." This sends the other inmate into hysterics. 

Lowell's poem underlines the topsy-turvy moral logic of imprisoning conscientious objectors for refusing to take part in war. But it is the same sort of blatantly inverted moral universe at the heart of current Republican posturing. I could understand if some politicians had reservations about Ukrainian aid on good-faith pacifist grounds, after all. I could understand if they were worried that US taxpayer dollars would be spent on killing people. But that is not even their objection. Their objection is that not all of it might be spent on killing people. Some of it, horror of horrors, might be spent on feeding Ukrainian refugees and repairing the humanitarian damage from Putin's invasion. 

Their objection isn't to killing, in short—it is to refusing to kill. This is the inverted moral universe of the modern GOP, in even its most "moderate" and "mainstream" wing. 

What can the rest of us do, in the face of such unreasoning weirdness; such upside-down moral logic? Shrug, and keep going—and try to keep our feet planted as firmly as we can on this side of the planet Earth.