When silence becomes complicity, democracy withers
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, April 8, 2026
DEAR READER: On Good Friday, in the Aberdeen Safeway parking lot, I was scolded — gently at first — by a woman who said, “You should stop picking on President Trump.”
She went on to say she has been reading my columns for years and used to agree with me “most of the time,” especially when I referred to Bill Clinton as our “Draft-Dodger-in-Chief.”
Resisting the temptation to ask how she differentiated the present Draft-Dodger-in-Chief from the former, I said I was glad she remembered that.
It being Good Friday, I decided to avoid a head-on collision at the intersection of politics and religion.
“God bless us all,” I said sincerely and began to walk away.
“If you’re a real Christian,” she said, stopping me in my tracks, “you will thank God for sending us a man like President Trump.”
I thanked God for convincing me to keep my mouth shut, for a change.
I wanted to say I’ve been praying unceasingly that God’s wisdom and grace will suddenly, irretrievably imbue our president with respect for truth, constitutional norms, peace and good will — that he might become an instrument for reconciliation; a leader who appeals to the better angels of our nature rather than fear and loathing.
I recalled a conversation a month earlier in the same parking lot with another MAGA who gravely informed me that the new pope is the Antichrist!
I walked away that time, too, with Isaiah’s admonition bouncing in my brain: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil …”
THE REV. Timothy Dale White, a retired pastor from Redmond, wrote a compelling column for The Seattle Times a few weeks ago. “For more than 60 years,” he related, “I have been an evangelical Christian. I have never seen our moral credibility thinner — or our silence more consequential — than it is now.”
White went on to observe that blind allegiance to a president who mocks the rule of law, casts doubt on fair elections and pardons insurrectionists threatens our hard-won democracy. “Denying plain facts or doubling down when the record is clear … is not about a single false statement, but a pattern: twisting the truth, attacking former allies, indulging vanity and vulgarity, and refusing to acknowledge error even when facts are settled.”
“This moment does not require evangelicals to agree politically,” the Rev. White concluded. “It asks for honesty, humility and the courage to speak when silence becomes complicity. When truth is traded for loyalty, democracy weakens, cruelty hardens and the damage does not stop with politics; it shapes the nation our children will inherit.”
ON EASTER, as our extended family gathered to celebrate the miracle of the Resurrection and the promise of a better world, I watched my three young grandsons and their cousins frolic in the spring sunshine.
But I found it difficult to clear my mind of our president’s crude, bellicose, God-mocking, Easter-morning social-media message to Iran and the rest of the world:
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F*ckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
In contrast, Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV celebrated his first Easter Mass as pontiff with a call to exercise hope against “the violence of war that kills and destroys.” With our billion-dollar-a-day war against Iran in its seventh week and Russia’s war of naked aggression against Ukraine in its fifth year (Putin’s not a crazy bastard; just evil to the core — and helping Iran!), the pope declared:
“The power with which Christ rose is entirely nonviolent. … This is the true strength that brings peace to humanity, because it fosters respectful relationships at every level: among individuals, families, social groups, and nations. It does not seek private interests, but the common good; it does not seek to impose its own plan, but to help design and carry out a plan together with others.”
By the time you read this, Tuesday will have come and gone. We may have bombed Iran “back to the Stone Ages” where, the president says, “it belongs.”
He must be right. Because he always is. Just ask his Secretary of War.
John C. Hughes was chief historian for the Office of the Secretary of State for 17 years after retiring as editor and publisher of The Daily World in 2008.
