Moral chaos
On the imbalance of power in America.
Since the war started a few weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about this quote, attributed to Thomas Merton:
“If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world.”
I think it speaks to the reality that, even in a world of bewildering moral chaos, we still have the freedom to live according to our values. We still have agency.
The feeling of having agency is supposed to be a given in the United States of America. We are a self-governing republic. We make our own laws. We are the authors of our own destiny.
But lately it feels like, instead of living in a world of rational self-determination, we are experiencing a world that is beyond our control.
Say what you want about the war in Iran, but the people of the United States did not decide it.
Congress didn’t vote for war.
There was hardly even a notice that war was going to happen. If you enjoy reading political op-eds in your spare time, you were aware of an insider debate about whether or not it was a good idea to attack Iran. But the public at large was in the dark.
When he ran for president, Trump’s whole deal was that he wouldn’t start any new wars.
Build the wall. No new wars.
That was the deal.
“America First” was, supposedly, about prioritizing the economy of the United States, rather than trying to fix problems in other parts of the world.
I didn’t pay attention to politics in my early adult life, but I’ve always been skeptical of the neo-conservative arguments about foreign intervention and regime change. The Iraq War played out while I was in college. Obama was elected when I was a senior at ASU.
I started paying closer attention to politics after Trump won in 2016. It felt like a civic duty to try to understand how this man had become president of the United States. The stakes felt more important than ordinary debates about policy.
Trump’s personality is defined by chaos and a lack of traditional morality. He rose to political power due to his celebrity as a reality TV star and the vulnerabilities embedded in the modern attention economy. We couldn’t look away from the spectacle Trump created. He turned the Republican Party, which was once known for its adherence to traditional values, into a twisted knot of moral contradictions.
At least he won’t start any wars.
That was an important point of relief for swing voters in 2024 who were willing to give Trump a second term despite his erratic personality.
Last month, Trump launched a war from his resort in Mar-a-Lago.
True to form, his management of the war has been erratic. We’ve heard mixed messages about the reasons for going to war, and it remains unclear what would constitute a victory.
Reasonable people can argue that Iran was a threat large enough to require the type of war we’re seeing now.
Some conservatives that I consider rational human beings, like Mike Pence, are in support of this war, despite everything they know about the character of the commander-in-chief and our history of waging war in the Middle East.
But I think it’s important to emphasize:
The Constitution clearly states that it is the role of Congress to decide whether or not to go to war.
This power was given to Congress intentionally by the Founders. In our republic, a Congressional vote provides legitimacy to a war because it signals consent by the people’s representatives. It allows for deliberation and accountability. In the case of a direct attack, a decision can be made quickly. After the Pearl Harbor attack, Congress declared war the very next day.
In the aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan, it is highly unlikely that Congress would have voted to approve a war in Iran. I realize that presidents have taken on more war-making powers over time — for better or worse — but this president campaigned on the avoidance of war, underscoring the point that the American people did not choose this war.
The Trump administration bombed Iranian nuclear facilities back in June. I haven’t seen evidence that the threat from Iran was so imminent that it couldn’t have been debated in Congress between June 2025 and the launch of this war in February 2026.
War is a serious thing. People die, lives are destroyed, and the geopolitical effects are hard to predict.
We should expect our leaders to take the responsibility of war seriously. Dwight Eisenhower is an example of a leader who demonstrated the traditional virtues of temperance and decency.
Today, we have Pete Hegseth up there at the podium: angry, preening, taunting, and bragging.
Today, the White House posts “hype videos” on social media splicing together war scenes with video game clips. Someone who works for the White House provided this quote to a reporter: “We’re over here just grinding away on banger memes, dude.”
250 years after our Founding Fathers pledged to each other their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” to establish a self-governing republic, we’ve got a group of people in power who, in the midst of war, are incapable of pretending to be honorable.
Last week, Trump mused about naming the Strait of Hormuz after himself.
During the middle of a worldwide energy crisis, a direct consequence of this war, our president is cracking jokes about re-naming the focal point of the crisis after himself.
Madness.
Some writers have speculated that this war will be the end of Trumpism.
I don’t know.
I very much hope that our nation comes to its senses and we have some sort of civic revival when this is over.
Our economy is currently being crushed by tariffs and war — two decisions that are plainly supposed to be in the hands of Congress.
Constitutional principles are not squishy, goody-goody concepts. They are important features of limited government that protect us from arbitrary or rash decision-making.
Civic revival is a long-term project that will involve reform, not just to our political process but also to the attention economy that has created the conditions for our madness.
A small contribution is to find peaceful habits in our daily lives.
Difficult, but not impossible.
Yes.
We are, indeed, faced with rebuilding the American enterprise pretty much from from scratch. 250 years of endeavor, and we have lost some of its most precious substance. Quite a celebration.
Yet, within the chaos you describe lie the seeds of rebirth if we will only claim them.
Was it necessary to wreak such devastation on ourselves? That answer is above my pay grade, but your commentary offers considerable clarity on where we are in the process.
The people who really care are beginning to stand up and be heard; the way back will be painful and costly. But now we have a clearer understanding of what is as stake and appreciation for how vulnerable we are to those who seek to destroy us from within.
Thank you, Billy, for your valuable contribution to the dialogue we must have with ourselves and each other.
Excellent commentary. It feels like our country is getting away from us. The norms have been thrown out the window. Congress cowers, SCOTUS has allowed a president to blantly break the law, and alternative facts are common. This is not how a democracy survives.