Fear itself
I will be the first to admit that it’s easy to sit on the sidelines wrapped in relative safety and criticize. Until we’re actually put to the test on the front lines, our courage is only theoretical. So when Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski confessed to tribal leaders in her native Alaska, “We are all afraid, … because retaliation is real,” I get it.
A less disingenuous mea culpa at Nuremberg would have also been “I was afraid.” It would have ultimately been more accurate — and paradoxically more courageous — than the craven, “I was only following orders.” On our current trajectory the day is imminent when retaliation for substandard zeal in the Republican Party will be just as swift and just as terrible as it was in Nazi Germany.
I come neither to praise nor to bury Lisa Murkowski. But I do understand. Yes, she’s a member of a political party I loathe as much as I loathe the American Nazi Party. But she was also one of the seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump at his second impeachment. She has always insisted that the 2020 election was free and fair. She is outspoken against Trump’s tariffs and runaway cuts by DOGE. We need her. We need more people like her.
Referring to the World War II alliance with Josef Stalin and Russia, Winston Churchill famously observed, “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” We need all the friends we can get just now, and people like Lisa Murkowski are rare. She’s more common than you’d think among Republicans who are terrified of Trump and the MAGA Party, but she’s rare in her willingness to speak publicly about it.
In 2024 we lost the popular vote by only 1.5%. Like the Republicans, ours was a minority showing. Theirs was just a lesser minority. So we’re in a contest of inches and not miles. We can’t afford purity tests. We must welcome as many people under our tent as we can find.
Yes, it’s true, retaliation is real. But the more of us United against Trump the safer we will remain. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt once observed, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. So don’t let fear paralyse you. Besides, nothing could be more terrifying than Trump with unlimited power, and fear could one day hand it to him on a golden plate.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.