Trump proves Nietzsche was right

Aid cuts bring turmoil to religious charities. Who will care if even they don't?

How many millions of children will be lost by callous disregard? (United Nations photo on VisualHunt)

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One of my neighbors out in the country some years back was telling me about the local guys of limited skills who had been hired to trim a hedge and decided the job needed a power lawn mower — which they carried, one of them on each side, making a nice flat top on the shrubbery until somebody tripped and tried to grab the mower as he fell. It quickly trimmed the tips off three fingers.

“Oh, God!” I exclaimed when I heard this, burying my face in my hand. But as I looked back up, my neighbor had turned away, chuckling and shaking his head. To him, the story was more like a silent movie character slipping on a banana peel than a real tragedy.

The Japanese have a saying, in rough translation, “The misfortunes of others taste like honey.” The philosopher Frederick Nietzsche declared, “To see others suffer does one good. To make others suffer even more so. This is a hard saying, but a mighty, human, all-too-human principle.” There’s no English word for this feeling, so we borrow from German and call the idea of enjoying others’ misery schadenfreude — a joining of the words for “damage” and “joy.” Taking joy in others’ damage is not an admirable trait, but Nietzsche was right: schadenfreude is real.¹

Which is by way of explaining my reaction to a three-bylined Washington Post story the other day reporting the growing distress of some groups affiliated with evangelical Christianity at the slashing of foreign aid instituted by Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and President Donald Trump’s designated hatchet man. At a State Department meeting last week, about three dozen representatives of some faith-based charities — most of whom, the Post noted, “had viewed the Trump administration as a political ally” — relayed how their organizations’ work had been hurt by the cancellation of almost all of the aid contracts from the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the resulting shuttering of countless life-saving programs around the world.

There was a representative of World Vision, who said the group would soon have to lay off thousands of workers who carry out its Bible-inspired work in some 100 countries. There was someone on hand from Samaritan’s Purse, which is led by a vocal Trump partisan, the Rev. Franklin Graham. Compassion International, Food for the Hungry, Christian Aid, World Relief and the National Association of Evangelicals also sent representatives, the Post reported.²

Notably, the organizations by and large have not complained publicly about the damage to their work being done by the president they supported. Some of their leaders are even defending the cuts. That shouldn’t be surprising: These groups, after all, represent brigades in Trump’s batallions of fervent believers. More than 8 in 10 evangelical and Pentecostal voters chose Trump in the fall (among white mainline Protestants, the pro-Trump vote was 56 percent). ³ They might be expected to be sympathetic to the notion advanced at that meeting by a Trump political appointee, Albert Gombis, who asked, “Do you want the country to get credit for foreign aid, or do you want the Creator to get the credit?”

To a child suffering from malaria or ebola, of course, it matters little who might deserve the credit for life-saving medicine, or who might deserve blame for its withdrawal. But as citizens of a nation that until now has proudly proclaimed a moral base for its policy choices, it might matter to us — that is, it ought to matter to us. And we might consider the apparently abandoned notion that, as John F. Kennedy said in his Inaugural Address, “Here on this earth, God’s work must truly be our own.”

If there was ever any doubt, though, we now surely see clearly that morality holds only performative value in Trump’s orbit: fine to talk about, but not nearly as good a decision-making criterion as, say, making money or elevating the authority of the president. Whether it’s Ukrainians whose homes are under Russian bombardment, terrified immigrant farmworkers facing deportation, or American kids whose lives might be imperiled by officially-sanctioned vaccine skepticism, what’s right now matters less than what’s profitable or partisan. We can’t afford to send money abroad; we need to save it so we can give more tax cuts to Musk, Trump and the other billionaires who now, more obviously than ever before, run this rich nation. Such is our America in the Age of Trump.

The dismantling of American aid to tragedy-stricken ends of the earth is only one of the torrent of infuriating moves by the second Trump administration, but it is perhaps the most cruel. You would think that the Christian groups would see foreign aid as a response to the command of generosity that the Gospel of Luke attributes to Jesus: “To whom much is given, much will be required.”⁴

But the fervent Trump supporters among the Christian charities so far haven’t wavered in their determination that Trump was, in fact, chosen by God to lead the United States, and that his impulses thus must be honored. Take, for example, Franklin Graham, who publicly prayed that God would make sure Trump won the election.⁵ Graham is recipient of an annual salary of about $900,000 from Samaritan’s Purse, which also employs his wife and two adult children, and he draws undisclosed compensation from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, plus such benefits as a private jet.⁶ There’s no indication any of Graham’s benefits will be affected by Samaritan’s Purse losing its USAID funding, and he has declared that he thinks the attack on USAID is a good idea. So I’ve got a prayer for you: Touch him, Lord.

In only the right way, I mean, of course. If that sounded like a prayer for Graham to feel pain, well, that would be something my dear mother would have labeled “unchristian.” But, truth be told, there’s more than a morsel of schadenfreude in my feelings about the groups affiliated with Graham and other evangelical leaders being upended by the whim of the notoriously unchristian Donald Trump. There’s a little voice inside me saying that I hope they get a dose of the disaster that they helped visit upon this world.

That’s not only mean, of course, but also shortsighted, because it’s not the organizations that will suffer, really, if Trump and Musk resist the court orders that they reinstate USAID funding and persist in their goal of making international aid no part of the responsibility of the world’s most wealthy nation. No, the pain will be felt by those who have until now been the recipients of that aid.

A memo written by a career USAID officer, laid out in the Washington Post reporting, detailed the certain results: Millions of children will now be infected with malaria, ebola and tuberculosis — and even polio, which had been nearly eradicated, but now will rebound to hundreds of millions of cases globally. Meanwhile, a million children will quickly lose treatment for severe acute malnutrition, which occurs when the body starts digesting its own tissues. Without U.S.-provided vaccines, up to 3 million children will fairly soon die from preventable diseases.

That seems to matter little to Trump. After all, he has said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” thus suggesting that people not born to American parents are somehow less fully human. If he paid any attention to science, he would understand that those health lapses overseas will inevitably lead to more communicable disease reaching American shores; the USAID memo noted that it will cost us billions of taxpayer dollars to treat the citizens in this country who will fall sick with preventable illnesses.

If you ask the Rev. Franklin Graham about that, as a Time reporter did a couple of weeks ago, he turns away the question by claiming USAID had diverted funds to social causes. “There’s so much money that has been spent on sex issues,” he declared. In Graham’s view, we ought to pay more attention to persecution of Christians. “There’s all kinds of examples of Christians that are being attacked by the gays and lesbians,” he said.⁷

It is worth noting here that the latest FBI statistics on hate crimes, released six months ago, reported that attacks based on sexual orientation were up 23 percent year over year, and attacks based on gender identity were up 16 percent.⁸ In his Time interview, Franklin Graham did not cite any examples of gay assaults on church people.

The phrase “hoisted on his own petard” is derived from William Shakespeare — a petard being a small bomb, useful for breaching a gate, which originated in France in the 16^th century. Shakespeare had Hamlet use the phrase as his wish for his murderous uncle, evoking the image of a bomb rolling back to blow up its maker. So there’s another bit of a foreign language that’s useful in this instance.

It’s harsh to wish ill upon those whose political aims put us in this place. You know, to demonize the Franklin Grahams of the world is to let ourselves absorb and then display the inhumanity that is represented by such steps as the USAID cuts — and, indeed, by the ridiculous notion that gay people are beating up Christians. That sort of reaction on our part would seem to confirm Nietzsche’s notion that we’re that kind of creature who takes joy in others’ discomfort.

Indeed, there’s an underlying strain of Nietzsche’s signature philosophy, nihilism, in every advance of Trumpism, and it tends to crowd out other impulses, infecting all of us. There is no shared standard of truth among Americans anymore, nor much recognition that its absence is a worry on scale with even the price of eggs. That’s in no small part because Trump denounces any uncomplimentary facts about himself and the results of his activities as a hoax or a lie, then lies profusely himself to obscure what is true. The cruelty represented by his USAID cuts and his disregard of their consequences suggests that he actually enjoys the suffering caused by the display of his power, just as Nietzsche suggested humans do.

Trump’s world is a valueless one, except for its value in elevating his own ego and interests. So many smart people who know better — like our well-educated and ambitious young vice president, or countless members of the U.S. Senate — have decided that the greater value to themselves comes from playing along. So we wonder: How will they be stopped? When will they get their comeuppance? And, to Nietzsche’s point, if the likely consequences of countless deaths don’t matter, does anything?

We who believe that our nation ought to be guided by some basic values find ourselves these days out-maneuvered by the opportunists and nihilists. Those core values we cherish — equal rights for all, care for those in need, freedom of expression — are worth fighting to preserve. The USAID cuts are just one example of the excesses of Trumpism, but there is perhaps no better manifestation of what happens when a nation loses track of its values. And the embrace of such selfishness by religious leaders is surely nothing less than a corruption of faith.

So yes, we would indeed feel schadenfreude if the pious enablers of Trump were to be hoisted on their own petard. It would serve them damn right, you know. But it wouldn’t do any of the rest of us any good, either.

1. https://lithub.com/not-just-a-german-word-a-brief-history-of-schadenfreude/

2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/03/06/usaid-state-christian-charities/

3. https://pres-outlook.org/2025/01/election-2024-voters-of-faith-overwhelmingly-picked-trump/

4. Luke 12:48

5. https://baptistnews.com/article/franklin-graham-prays-aloud-for-trump-to-win-the-election/

6. https://paddockpost.com/2024/10/11/executive-compensation-at-samaritans-purse-2022/

7. https://time.com/7261411/franklin-graham-usaid-foreign-aid-freeze-interview/

8. https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/new-fbi-data-anti-lgbtq-hate-crimes-continue-to-spike-even-as-overall-crime-rate-declines

WHAT’S YOUR VIEW?

This essay argues that we must remain true to our values even amid the inhumane acts of the Trump administration — though it’s hard not to give in to schadenfreude when confronting those who brought us this calamitous administration. Do you agree? How should we respond to today’s challenges?

(Note: Substack accepts comments only from paid subscribers on The Upstate American site.)

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NEWSCLIPS FROM THE UPSTATES

Dispatches from our common ground *

Wherein each week we look around what we call the nation’s Upstates — those places just a bit removed from the center of things — to find illuminating news and intriguing viewpoints, which you might not otherwise see.

This week, we share reporting published here:

• Knoxville, Tenn. (Knoxville News-Sentinel, knoxnews.com)

• Oakley, Kan. (Salina Journal, salina.com)

• Tallahassee, Fla. (Pensacola News-Journal, pnj.com)

NOTE: The complete “Newsclips from the Upstates” section, and The Upstate American Midweek Extra Edition, which is sent to email boxes most Wednesdays, are available only to paid subscribers. Thanks for your support!

TENNESSEE

Small publisher encourages under-represented voices

On a wooded, 45-acre hollow in rural Tennessee, a poet and her partner have created a nonprofit that supports both a residential writing retreat and a publishing arm for historically under-represented voices. Hayden Dunbar in the Knoxville News-Sentinel reports that Sundress Publications, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, publishes full-length books and chapbooks, both in print and online, with a focus on historically marginalized writers — people of color, queer people, writers with disabilities. It also oversees five literary journals and sponsors events featuring its resident writers. The founding director, Erin Elizabeth Smith, says Firefly Farms is looking for “stories that we feel that we have not heard enough of."

KANSAS

Senator walks back claim of paid harassment

When a U.S. senator faced an unexpectedly hostile town hall audience in Kansas, he retreated and cut short the planned one-hour get-together with constituents — and then claimed to have proof that Democrats had paid people to show up and harass him. President Trump picked up that claim on social media. But now, reports Jason Alatidd of the Topeka Capital-Journal, U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall has backtracked; in fact, he says, he has no evidence to support his claim. “But that was the rumor there,” he insisted. It was when one man stood and complained that veterans are losing their federal jobs that Marshall fled — but the man was, in fact, a local resident, Chuck Nunn, who said, “If they were going to have a paid actor, they would pick somebody a hell of a lot better looking than I am, and someone that's much better spoken than I am.” The incident in Kansas has prompted Republican officials in Washington to urge members of Congress not to do live events with constituents, lest they likewise be confronted with awkward questions.

FLORIDA

LGBTQ youth say they want to get out of Florida

A new poll finds that more than two-thirds of LGBTQ young people in Florida and their family members have considered moving out of the state because of policies and laws implemented in recent years. Ana Goñi-Lessan reports in the Gannett newspapers that the survey by the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that provides support for LGBTQ youth, found that less than half of the respondents felt their community was supportive of their gender identity or sexual orientation. In the past year, the poll found, one-fourth were threatened or harmed because of their sexual orientation or identity, and 37 percent had contemplated suicide.

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-Rex Smith