There is a great line in the movie “Bull Durham,” ironically spoken by Susan Sarandon’s uber-bigot character, “the world is made for people aren’t cursed with self-awareness.” Life is much easier without the burden of incessant contemplation of morality and purpose. If we could just embrace whatever seems fulfilling to us in the moment and never pause to reflect on our choices, we would be liberated from the morose moralizing that brings us nothing but grief.
President Trump, free from the curse of self-awareness, proposed that the entire population of the Gaza Strip be relocated to other places so that a “Riviera” could emerge under new US “ownership.” Unsurprisingly, his proposal was met with opposition, both principled and reflexive, that swiftly condemned his idea as “immoral.”
For those of us who are inclined to repudiate everything that Donald Trump says and does, there is a deeply troubling question that we need to explore: Is involuntary relocation actually immoral?
To answer the question, we must begin by dropping the pretense that Trump is immoral. He is not. He is, however, consistently amoral. His words and actions throughout his life, both as a celebrity and as a politician, demonstrate that he has little regard for what is “right” or “wrong.” Indeed, his views on any subject can shift with extraordinary speed if he finds it expedient to do so because, from his point of view, right and wrong are not material considerations.
Trump’s amorality empowers him to say things that attack conventional thinking like a flamethrower. His attitudes toward the Constitutional authority of his office, immigration, tariffs, the Panama Canal, Greenland and the annexation of Canada can all be explained in the same vein as his Gaza proposal — as the musings of a person who is not constrained by principles. That Donald Trump is no philosopher will hardly come as a shock, but his stark neutrality on questions of right and wrong puts those of us who do think philosophically into a difficult position because amoral and immoral are not necessarily synonymous.
The universe of moral thinking includes religious philosophies promoting unique principles of right and wrong that violate what we would consider to be normative, rational virtues and would therefore be immoral.
Hamas’ war on Israel, for example, is driven by its religious philosophy, which permits rape, kidnapping, torture and murder, regardless of the helplessness of their victims who could be (and were) small children. These atrocities are “good” because they serve a presumptively righteous purpose in the minds of the perpetrators.
In contrast, to Hamas, a proposal of involuntary relocation to establish a new status quo in which there is no need for rape, kidnapping, torture, or murder is “evil.”
In this light, the difference between Trump’s amorality and true immorality should be apparent. If we choose to permit the continuation of that which Hamas perceives as “good” because we have to refrain from doing something that they perceive as “bad,” can it be said that we are making a proper moral choice?
Rather than steep our moral perspective in mere rejection of Hamas’ perversion of morality, what might a more conventional moral perspective have to teach us? Immanuel Kant’s “Categorical Imperative” is a familiar philosophical principle asserting that moral acts are those that can be universalized, meaning that one should assume all others would behave similarly.
The classic example of this is that stealing is wrong because if everyone steals, society could not function. Applied to the present case, if we permit the involuntarily relocation of the people of Gaza, even if only in response to intractable conflict, would it then be permissible to permit the involuntary relocation of all other people in similar circumstances?
As Jews, we rightly fear the acceptance of such a principle because involuntary relocation of Jews would also be justified. Given that this outcome is intolerable, the necessary conclusion appears to be that supporting the movement of Gaza’s population must be wrong.
Here’s the rub. The categorical imperative as stated above fails to account for the reality that involuntary relocation of Jews, Arabs or any other people is far more established as a principle than treating a people’s right to live in a land as inviolate. Involuntary relocations of indigenous populations are what built the US and every other country in the Western Hemisphere.
Every European country participated for more than 1,000 years in expulsions of Jews from the Inquisition to the Pale of Settlement to the Holocaust. Arab countries forced their Jewish populations to leave after the founding of Israel. Armenians were victims of an Ottoman genocide and more recently driven by the hundreds of thousands from Ngorno-Karabakh. Muslims and Hindus moved to create India and Pakistan, Kurds have been driven out or “merely “killed by Iraqis and Turks.
The lists go on. In short, human history, both ancient and modern, suggests that the categorical imperative actually supports involuntary relocation rather than condemning it, meaning there is no comfortable resolution to this moral conundrum.
Self-awareness is indeed a curse. If we could be freed of our moral sensibilities or even embrace a debauched religious philosophy as Hamas has done, we would have no reservations about President Trump’s proposal. Deriding the idea as immoral, however, misses the mark. It would not be much of a chore to substantiate the morality of involuntary relocation of Gazans either because it is the opposite of what Hamas wants, or because it is just one more example of a categorical imperative in statecraft. But, cursed as we are, we must be able to live with the knowledge of the choices we make.
The noblest part of us has spent decades in search of peaceful coexistence. We could justify abandoning that ideal and there is ample reason to do so, but is that who we aspire to be?
In the end, we are forced by this choice into self-awareness and to consider who we really are, by Donald Trump, of all people.
