On Thursday November 6th, during a Presidential announcement, a guest fainted in the Oval Office. The photo above, taken during the event, perfectly captures how Donald Trump feels about people in need. He ignores them completely.
He looked and then turned away… Donald Trump, a person without a single sympathetic instinct, stood staring straight ahead, as if pretending that whatever suffering the man behind him was experiencing wasn’t happening.
– Lawrence O’Donnell
Christians should easily recognize this behavior. It is the same behavior demonstrated by the priest and the Levite in Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan.
“Who is my neighbor”
… A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
-Luke 10:30-32
I am not going to recount the rest of this parable. I believe my readers are very well acquainted with the story. I just want to remind everyone that ignoring people in need is not a sign of a good person. (!!!)
This same behavior has become extremely common among elected Republicans generally – especially during Trump’s second term. They seem blind to the harmful effects of their own policies.
And those voters who supported, and still support, these dangerous Republican politicians, are themselves willfully blind to the damage the Trump administration, and the enabling, do-nothing, Republican Congress, along with the Governors and legislatures in Republican states, have done, and continue to do, to our Constitution, our country, and the world.
“Let them eat cake”
This past week, as the shutdown of the Federal Government continued to disrupt the country, the Trump administration declined to tap into contingency funds that could keep the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) going.
As millions of American parents wonder how they will be able to feed their children, Republican leaders continue to claim that they are powerless to fix the problem that THEY caused.
Yet, legal experts, and Trump’s own Department of Agriculture, have said that the government could indeed keep funding SNAP under the current shutdown. In fact, in the last shutdown, during Trump’s first term, he actually went out of his way to make sure that people did not miss their SNAP benefits.
This time, Trump has chosen to weaponize hunger in America for some perceived political advantage. This, of course, is on top of the death and hunger caused by his shutting down of USAID and the pain his ill-conceived tariffs are causing all around the world.
Violent innocence
The Republicans are claiming their hands are tied in a vain attempt to maintain an illusion of moral or procedural purity. “We would feed people if we could!” they claim. Yet, of course, they can feed people. Congress created and funded the SNAP program in the first place. They have the power but not the will. Their “powerlessness” is a phony pretense.
Violent innocence is a term that posits that a person or institution can cause significant harm while remaining morally ambiguous and/or seemingly ‘unaware’ that they are causing it.
-Alexandra Cromer
Defined in a book by psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas as an “aggressive form of denial,” violent innocence is a mindset of willful ignorance and deliberate unawareness.
Violent ignorance is a cognitive mechanism that people use to defend their self-image against the reality of the damage and pain they are causing.
-Caroline Bologna
“Denying the sun at noon day”
I believe concept of “violent innocence” explains how many Latter-day Saints are able to justify their continuing support for Trump, and his Republican enablers, despite the outright Authoritarian Fascism that is now on obvious and frightening display. These people are being willfully ignorant. They continue to deny the uncomfortable real-world facts by living in a state of perpetual and deliberate unawareness.
This stubborn self-blindness among our own people breaks my heart. Latter-day Saints believe in – or at least say we believe in – continual growth and improvement. We claim to value Truth, and we say we believe our founding Prophet who taught that, “A man is saved no faster than he gains knowledge.”
Clinging to a story of our own “righteous helplessness” in order to sidestep accountability for the real consequences of our actions is NOT the path to Heaven. Salvation requires continual honest self evaluation – and sincere humble repentance where we fall short. We know this. Yet, how many Latter-day Saints recognize that the need to repent also applies to our political choices?
Surely, any right-minded Latter-day Saint would not want to spend the afterlife in the same place Donald J. Trump and his cronies will be located. Why do we continue to enable their evil behavior here?
Sources:
Allison Detzel, “Lawrence O’Donnell on the photo that should be the official portrait of Trump’s second term,” MSNBC, November 7, 2025.
Arthur Delaney, “Trump Went Out of His Way to Save Food Benefits Last Time the Government Shut Down,” HuffPost, October 29, 2025.
Caroline Bologna, “This Psychological Term Explains How GOP Officials Justify Harm,” HuffPost, November 9, 2025.
Christopher Bollas, “Violent Innocence,” Being a Character: Psychoanalysis and Self Experience, Routledge, 1993.