This is what happens when we are governed without shame

One of the precepts of Alcoholics Anonymous that drives the success of the program is the idea of healthy shame. It’s all part of taking a moral inventory and making amends. Applied in a positive way, free of guilt, shame helps to keep sober alcoholics focused. It’s meant not to drag one down but to increase motivation.

I bring this up to drive home the point that the concept of shame has disappeared entirely from the Republican Party. Its inglorious death matters because shame is so crucial in holding people in line. Without it, there is no behavioral code to which to feel bound. Integrity tends to evaporate.

I was thinking about shame and its utter absence from our discourse this week when I caught a glimpse of the shameful, vile alternative White House website revising the history of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol — an event that anyone with eyes and ears understands was instigated, fueled, and perpetuated entirely by Donald John Trump.

The creation of this propaganda site was prompted by Tuesday’s fifth anniversary of the riot. It represents a horror show of lies and reverse justice that casts the event as a Democratic fabrication, laying the deadly armed rebellion at the feet of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi’s grim expression hovers in photograph at the top of the site, which asserts:

“The Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as ‘insurrectionists’ and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump — despite no evidence of armed rebellion or intent to overthrow the government.

“In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters, all while Pelosi’s own security lapses invited the chaos they later exploited to seize and consolidate power.”

It continues:

“This gaslighting narrative allowed them to persecute innocent Americans, silence opposition, and distract from their own role in undermining democracy.”

There is a timeline of subheads tagged, “Ashli Babbitt Murdered in Cold Blood”; “Betrayal of the President: Mike Pence Refuses to Act” (“…in an act of cowardice and sabotage”); “Stolen Election Certified”; “Mass Arrests of Patriotic Protestors”; and “Weaponized Prosecutions Target President Trump.”

The site further maintains that the nearly 1,600 “patriotic Americans prosecuted for their presence at the Capitol” were “mere trespassers or peaceful protesters treated as insurrectionists by a weaponized Biden DOJ.”

In the main, the site casts Pelosi as the chief villain who — in video footage culled from a 2022 HBO documentary, out of context of course — is heard taking “responsibility” for the mayhem. Trump, meanwhile, is billed as nothing more sinister than a pep rally cheerleader, the angry mob as enthusiastic peaceniks.

The risk in this attempt to turn history inside-out is that it will ultimately gain traction as somehow real. You know what they say about repeating the same lie: eventually it takes on the sheen of truth, as attributed to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

But let’s return to the notion of shame. It’s simply not possible that anyone who either worked on this atrocity of a site or serves in this toxic administration believes a single word of this insane J6 narrative. At best, they may cast it as an attempt at satire, however misguided.

No, this is about flat-out shamelessness. They lie and lie and lie, and feel not a smidgen of conscience. They have no trouble sleeping at night (or in the case of Trump, during the day) because no one in the MAGA crowd will call them out on their unfettered, unapologetic, chronic dishonesty.

The lack of shame isn’t a consequence of the Trump presidency but a primary feature. Consider the shameless refusal again and again to concede the 2020 election; the shameless normalization of direct conflicts of interest and Trump’s refusal to avoid profiting from his presidency; the shameless attacks on journalists and anyone else who dares question Trump's kingly authority; the shameless demands of loyalty while practicing none himself; and the shameless unwillingness to ever admit fault, exercise remorse, or practice self-correction.

We saw this shamelessness on display yet again on Wednesday when Trump and ICE Barbie herself, Kristi Noem, wasted not a second in tossing blame at Renee Nicole Good for her own killing at the hands of an ICE agent, for the crime of trying to drive away from mayhem. Who needs investigation when accountability is so extraneous?

When most of us are shown to be spiteful or vindictive or too quick to judgment, we change course, switching on a sense of decency, righteousness, civility. Not Trump or his aides. Their loyalty test surrounds who can show themselves most heartless and wicked without backing down.

Malice is a badge of honor. It’s confused with strength, much as fear is mistaken for respect. But there is nothing respectable about shamelessness. It is simply the art of being subhuman. How the evangelical community can’t grasp this simple fact, and still by and large backs Trump, remains one of the great mysteries of our time.

The shamelessness that Trump deploys isn’t incidental but strategic. He instinctively understands that norms matter only if people care when they’re broken. By violating them so loudly and so often, he brazenly tests the country’s tolerance for cruelty and emotional carnage.

So far, the message he’s received is that the guardrails of shame don’t apply to him. There are the rules of civil society, and then there’s the Rule of Trump that states as long as you don’t acknowledge the lack of scruples, your indecency will remain permissible.

This is how a proudly deceptive administration can create a website spouting a grotesquely outrageous narrative about what went down on Jan. 6. 2021, and have it seem like business as usual. The shamelessness that’s baked in is the unrepentant signature of moral midgets.

• Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.