We can do this, America

Virtually overnight, thousands of Americans have lost their jobs as their new government dismantles and shutters agencies and departments in the name of efficiency. Many other Americans, as well as millions of non-Americans, have lost the help they get from the US government. The help for non-Americans is especially concerning, as it’s the so-called “soft power” that, until now, has made America so – I want to say loved and respected, but let’s just say appreciated – around the world.

Then there is the American Vice President, who boasted last week to European government and defense leaders, as if in a silly cowboy movie, “There’s a new sheriff in town!” No one was laughing. The fear is palpable that this arrogance from America will bring disaster not only to Europe but also to the Middle East, the South China Sea and anywhere the US has a presence. The whole structure of post-World War II peacekeeping is in jeopardy, and the image of America in the world is clearly changing from a force for good to a force for disruption, if not for evil.

And then there’s the billionaire in a baseball cap, standing in the Oval Office, telling the nation how much waste, fraud and abuse he and his team have discovered in the government. Virtually none of the examples that he cited were true in the way he described them. They were just cherry-picked from old news or inevitable inefficiencies, then exaggerated and proclaimed for maximum effect. When he was called out on one “fact” by a member of the media – the claim that $50 million of condoms were sent Gaza for the terrorist group Hamas – he said, essentially, Sorry, maybe that one isn’t completely true (the money was actually sent to the province of Gaza in Mozambique, to be used to help fight AIDS), but what we’re saying is true in principle. In other words, mistakes are going to happen, because we’re moving fast and breaking things, like a Silicon Valley startup. Except it’s a government he’s talking about, one with a worldwide reputation and a carefully constructed and preserved (until now) moral stature, with reach into the lives of millions of people.

Musk’s speech in the Oval Office, of course, covered only a tiny fraction of what he and his team are doing. You can find a lucid and detailed account of the state of things as of this past weekend here, from journalist Claire Berlinski. Be prepared for a long but enlightening and sobering read. I will not be alarmist. Read it for yourself.

But the Trump administration does not represent the real America. I don’t care how many votes Donald Trump received in the last election, the man sitting in the White House gives every indication that his main intention is not to advance America’s interests but to soothe his personal grievances and dismantle the country’s historic position in the world as a force for good. Elon Musk’s intention may be far more sinister. The only awe America is inspiring now is awe at the people’s naivete. Who would want to hold up America as a model of anything now, except as a model of how to waste a hard-earned position of world-class leadership? We’re going to be cleaning up this mess for years. The Democrats lost the election, maybe deservedly so, but now there’s no excuse for blind hope or vacuous politics. The grownups need to take charge.

The grownups are you and me.

When I grew up in the United States, it was a given that America would always stand for things like freedom and generosity and good faith. It’s a shock to see that reputation allowed to self-destruct so fast. But the Trump regime is not America. When all is said and done, I expect the heat of the hell we are entering will burn up the selfishness and hate, and we will be left with something solid that will save us: The integrity of those who stayed alert.

Integrity is moral fire. It’s a core characteristic of leaders, past and present, public and private, who decide to hold, not fold. Watching so many people in government and private life shrink in cowardice before what they know are lies is pitiful. On the other hand, I know that even the few hundred readers of Be Not Afraid each week are enough to make a difference if we maintain our integrity. That, more than money, more than military force, more even than the Constitution, will keep America and the world safe.

There are many examples of integrity now, in journalism (Substack, for example, is full of them), in business (some companies, such as Costco, refused to capitulate to the demand to dismantle programs to ensure that their employee base represented the best of all Americans), in government (more below), and in private life.

A recent event occurring in New York and Washington shows what government integrity looks like. New York City Mayor Eric Adams was indicted last year for taking bribes and soliciting illegal campaign contributions. But the Trump administration announced last Friday that they wanted to drop the charges, claiming that they were political and that having to fight the charges would prevent Adams from focusing on more important things, such as illegal immigration and violent crime. The latter happen to be issues of importance to the administration.

The Department of Justice decided to file a motion to dismiss the charges “without prejudice,” meaning they can be refiled if Adams doesn’t do what the administration wants. It smells of mafia tactics, and so when the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove III, demanded that a senior US attorney file a motion to dismiss the charges – something that Bove could have done himself – seven attorneys resigned rather than file the motion.

One of the attorneys was US Attorney Danielle Sassoon. Another was Hagen Scotten, an assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of New York. When Sassoon refused to file the motion and resigned, Bove demanded that Scotten file it. In response, Scotten wrote a letter to Bove. This is how law professor and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance described what happened:

Scotten...began [the letter] by correcting an error; he said he’d received correspondence from Bove claiming he refused an order to file a motion to dismiss the Adams case. Scotten told Bove that “wasn’t exactly correct,” because his U.S. Attorney, Danielle Sassoon who resigned on Thursday, never asked him to do it. In other words, Sassoon had the courage to do what neither Attorney General Pam Bondi or Bove had, to take responsibility rather than ordering someone else to do her dirty work.

Scotten advised Bove that the only reason he had not refused to file a motion to dismiss was because he wasn’t ordered to do so. He said he was “entirely in agreement with her [Sassoon’s] decision.” There was no justification for dismissing the case. Any suggestion it was political was belied by the fact it had been investigated under the direction of four different U.S. Attorneys. And Scotten cut through any suggestion that the proposed dismissal isn’t about ensuring Adams cooperates with the Trump administration. The dismissal is without prejudice, meaning charges can be refiled if Adams doesn’t toe the line. Scotten wrote, “No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.”

Then came the part where Hagan Scotten schooled the deputy attorney general, the attorney general, the president of the United States, and the rest of the country in what it means to be a federal prosecutor:

“There is a tradition in public service of resigning in a last-ditch effort to head off a serious mistake. Some will view the mistake you are committing here in the light of their generally negative views of the new Administration. I do not share those views. I can even understand how a Chief Executive whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal. But any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way. If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.”

Scotten joined the other six attorneys in resigning. A senior attorney, close to retirement, finally agreed to file the motion, in part to save the jobs of other attorneys who refused to file.

These attorneys supported each other, and the historic values of America, by holding integrity front and center. They did what they could to keep the reputation of the Department of Justice free from political influence. They could not, in the end, do that, but the point was made that resistance would not be suffocated by cowardice and moral obliviousness.

The US will continue to go through these disorienting times until Americans as a whole decide they will no longer compromise their integrity. As Paul put it in Ephesians, “…we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places…”¹

There is a story in the Bible about the power of integrity. It’s the story of Job.² Think of Job as a stand-in for the best of America.

“There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil” (1:1).

Satan, however, wanted to corrupt Job’s integrity and tried to convince the God of this story to do the dirty work. “…now, stretch out Your hand and touch all that he has,” Satan demanded, “and he will surely curse You to Your face!" (1:11).

God declined, however, to do Satan’s bidding, so Satan began himself to try to undermine Job. One calamity led to another, and Job ended up losing everything he had, including his family. But things didn’t turn out as Satan had expected. “In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong” (1:22).

Satan, however, wasn’t ready to yield.

“So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and struck Job with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” (2:7). Job was virtually unrecognizable to his friends. His wife mocked him. "Do you still hold fast to your integrity?” she sneered. “Curse God and die!" (2:9).

But Job knew he had done no wrong, that he was still the good man he had always been. His plight, however, was beginning to weigh on him. “My face is flushed from weeping,” he cried, “And on my eyelids is the shadow of death” (16:16).

And yet he had faith that God would not fail him. “He knows the way that I take,” he said. “When He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold” (23:10). He knew he was a moral man, and this knowledge was keeping him alive. “Till I die I will not put away my integrity from me,” he said. “My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go” (27:5).

Not surprisingly, there were moments when he longed for the past, the times he was respected, as some Americans do now, and others soon will. “Oh, that I were as in months past,” he said, “as in the days when God watched over me; When His lamp shone upon my head, And when by His light I walked through darkness.... When the ear heard, then it blessed me, And when the eye saw, then it approved me; Because I delivered the poor who cried out, The fatherless and the one who had no helper..... I put on righteousness, and it clothed me;... I was eyes to the blind, And I was feet to the lame. I was a father to the poor” (29:2, 3, 11, 12, 14-16).

But now the reality of human faithlessness was staring Job in the face. “...they mock me.... They abhor me, they keep far from me; They do not hesitate to spit in my face” (30:1). God, though, didn’t let him wallow in self-pity. There was something Job could do. “I will also confess to you,” God said, “that your own right hand can save you” (40:14).

Job realized his integrity was indeed what would save him. He had to be the virtuous influence that he had been before the calamity came, the uplifter, the generous giver, the healer, and it would be enough to save him. He would be able to look at God directly and not be ashamed. “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear,” he said in gratitude, “but now my eye sees You” (42:5).

The crisis and the testing time had reached an end, and that end was love for God and humanity. “And the Lord restored Job's losses when he prayed for his friends,” the writer notes. “Indeed the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before” (42:10).

Keep it together, America. This too shall pass, if we hold to the values, like integrity, that the country has always represented. Job went through hell before he found heaven. America will find itself whole again, as a people, as a nation and as a force for good in the world, and it will be stronger than ever.

Be not afraid.

1. Ephesians 6:10

2. The translation of Job is from the New King James Version of the Bible.