The Solzhenitsyn Test
In his 1970 Nobel lecture, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.” The problem presently before the United States is that the Trump administration will be staffed in its upper reaches by political appointees who, without exception, have failed this test.
To get their positions, these men and women have to be willing to declare, publicly if necessary, that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and that the insurrectionary riot of January 6, 2021, was not instigated by a president seeking to overturn that election. These are not merely matters that might be disputed, or on which reasonable people can disagree, or of which citizens in the public square can claim ignorance. They are lies, big, consequential lies that strike at the heart of the American system of government, that deny the history through which we have all lived, that reject the unambiguous facts that are in front of our noses. They are lies that require exceptional brazenness, or exceptional cowardice, or a break with reality to assert.
Lying itself is a common thing. There are the routine social lies that all of us experience and tell: “Your talents are terrific, just not the right fit for the organization,” or “I have always admired your accomplishments,” or for that matter, “What an adorable baby.” There are the comforting lies: “It was a really close call,” or “Your son did not suffer.” There are the lies of loyal aides: “The president’s abilities are unimpaired by advancing age.”
Politicians lie differently, some of them often and freely. They promise things they know they cannot deliver, they deny cheating on their spouses, and they claim ignorance about realities on which they were briefed. Even so, the lies required to get into the Trump administration are qualitatively different.
[Read: What I didn’t understand about political lying]
They are different in part because they are not simply spewed by politicians who once knew better and said otherwise in public. Rather, they have to be affirmed by the talented and not-so-talented men and women who are being named to important positions in government—the secretaries, undersecretaries, directors, and senior advisers who make the government work. They are different, too, because this is a prerequisite for senior government service. In the first Trump term, Jim Mattis and John Kelly and John Bolton did not have to lie in this way to get their jobs. Very few of them would have willingly done so. And they most certainly did not have to lie so egregiously and so blatantly.
What difference it will make is an interesting question. In other parts of their lives, many of these people are supportive friends and spouses, generous donors to good causes, and talented administrators. Their sense of reality will not necessarily be impaired by having had to deny this particular historical truth, or at least not immediately. They may very well do good, making government more efficient or helping tame the aggressive coalition of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea that poses an increasing threat to world peace. They may dismantle unnecessary regulations, or pernicious speech codes that in their own way suppress the truth.
But still, at the beginning, when the seed of their government service has been planted in the soil of a new administration, it will be found to have a rotten kernel.
[Read: Lies about immigration help no one]
I learned as an assistant dean, many years ago, that student malefactors often found it impossible to admit to having done something wrong. That unambiguous case of plagiarism “wasn’t me,” I heard more than once—not a denial of having stolen another’s words and claimed credit for them, but a strange psychological trick of convincing themselves that it had been some other self, an aberrant doppelgänger, who had done the dirty deed. The disciplinary process in which I took part had as its objective bringing the student to realize that no, that really was you who did it, and the question is how you are going to deal with that fact.
Twenty-year-olds found that process wrenching enough. Fifty-year-olds would, I think, find the tension between their self-conception and their behavior unbearable, short of a major breakdown or a conversionary religious experience. So they will look to two other defenses.
The first, the resort of particularly shallow people, will be simply not to care. Given the character of some of the Trump appointees—serial infidelities, dubious business practices, careers of evasions and deceptions—this may feel like just one more. They will shrug it off.
The more likely response will be a variety of self-defenses to keep intact their self-image as honorable public servants. Some will offer the defense of the Vichy bureaucrats, who insisted that as distasteful as the regime was, better that they should execute its policies than someone else. More likely will be their conviction that a great opportunity exists to do good in their chosen sphere of action, and this is just the price they have to pay for it. History having faded as an essential and respected discipline for policy makers and statesmen, they may think that most history is a pack of half-truths or falsehoods anyway, and not particularly relevant to the needs of the moment. That is a surprisingly common view among successful executives: Of one I heard it said, “For him the past simply does not exist; today, to some extent; but the future is what he really thinks about.” The individual concerned would probably not have disputed or even have been disturbed by that characterization.
[Read: Donald Trump’s most dangerous Cabinet pick]
Whatever the defenses they come up with, however, the senior appointees of the Trump administration will have to enter public service having affirmed an ugly lie, or several. No matter what other qualities they have to their credit, that will remain with them. That, in turns, means that we can never really trust them: We must always suppose that, having told an egregious lie to get their positions, they will be willing to tell others to hold on to them. They can have no presumption of truthfulness in their government service.
That in turn will change them fundamentally. In Robert Bolt’s marvelous A Man for All Seasons, Sir Thomas More explains to his daughter why he cannot yield to Henry VIII’s demand that he declare the king’s first marriage invalid, allowing Henry to marry Anne Boleyn, and hopefully get the male heir the kingdom desperately needs. More knows that that declaration is in the public interest. He also knows that his refusal will sooner or later lead him to the execution block.
When a man takes an oath, Meg, he’s holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers then—he needn’t hope to find himself again.
To land a top job with Donald Trump, you have to open your fingers. It is, as Solzhenitsyn suggested, the end of your integrity.
Not a huge or even a noticeable price for many of these people, although perhaps one that most of them have not thought much about. It is equally pointless to condemn or pity them for becoming what they have chosen to be. But we should also recognize that, for the next four years at least, and despite whatever protestations of higher belief some of them may make, we need to be wary, because henceforth we will have a government of damaged souls.