Victims
feeling remorse for the wrong reasons
I use this platform, among other things, to recommend things I think others will like, and I’ve been meaning, for some time, to mention Rebecca Watson, a YouTuber who generally writes about science-related matters. Her videos about Dave Grohl and Lawrence Krauss are especially worth viewing, but the video embedded below from February 2025 is the one I’d like to focus on now. I won’t attempt to recapitulate the contents of the video, which I hope you will watch, but will write about some of the thoughts and connections her presentation sparked in me. What makes her videos so effective, entertaining and informative is how she blends personal experiences with the argument she makes and then supports with convincing evidence.
An anecdote about Bluesky sets the stage. Watson commends the platform for trying to create a friendly and supportive environment, even though the point of the entire piece is to disagree with the effort to get everyone to welcome former MAGA supporters into the fold. I was a little surprised by her position and wasn’t sure I agreed. Shouldn’t we be tolerant of people who have had a change of heart? There are, after all, people whose names were synonymous with contemptible views and actions who have not not just shown remorse, but devoted themselves to fighting what they once supported. I think of Bill Moyers, once a spokesman for LBJ’s Vietnam lies and later a champion for journalistic integrity (Amy Goodman’s 2011 interview is worth watching); Frank Schaeffer, singularly responsible politicizing the issue of abortion and now a staunch supporter of women’s rights and enemy of fascism; and Tim Miller, once A GOP operative and hater of liberal policies, now one of the fiercest and most vocal MAGA critics (his book Why We Did It throws some light on how and why his former colleagues became Trump supporters). So why is Watson so ungenerous towards those who regret supporting Trump? Turns out she has some good reasons.
She finds parallels between our descent into totalitarianism and the rise of Nazism in Germany prior to WWII, a subject I’ve given a lot of thought to throughout my life, and examines a popular notion that the good people of the country were misled by a relatively small group of evil monsters. Conventional wisdom favored executing those monsters (or at least those whom the victors didn’t need for their aerospace programs and the like), and ridding the world of evil. I’m inclined to accept Hannah Arendt’s line about the banality of evil. When she suggested that Eichmann wasn’t a monster and the personification of evil, but an ordinary human being, and that we all have the capacity for evil within us, she was castigated by those seeking scapegoats to bear all the blame, rather than imagining ordinary people like themselves capable of committing such atrocities. Arendt’s view is wonderfully articulated by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whom Watson quotes:
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.
Watson’s simple statement that “The Third Reich’s power came from the will of the people, ” is chilling because of the clear implication about Trump’s power, but it matches my own beliefs. I’m disgusted by attempts to portray Trump as evil and his followers and enablers as dupes. The crux of Biden’s 2020 campaign was that he could work with his reasonable Republican friends once the evil Trump was disposed of. It’s that same impulse to exonerate the larger population and lay all the blame on the shoulders of one individual or small group of people. Was Hilary right, then, in calling a segment of the population deplorable? Well, it wasn’t helpful tactically, and was problematical in another way. Watson says, “… the people who voted for Donald Trump last November are not evil. They are our family members and our neighbors. They have their good qualities and their bad qualities.” That’s the point Arendt and Solzhenitsyn make—there are no good guys and bad guys, but people with different propensities within them.
Despite her empathy for those who regret their support for Trump, Watson isn’t ready to embrace them because she doesn’t believe they have fundamentally changed. They are only dismayed that they themselves are impacted by the policies put in place by the guy they supported. She compares this attitude to that of Germans that Hannah Arendt spoke to after the war, who complained of their own suffering, saw themselves as victims, and seemed to have little remorse about the victims of the Nazi regime. Watson also cites journalist Harald Jähner’s book Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955 which shows a widespread feeling among post-war Germans that they were victims and were duped by Hitler.
Most erstwhile Trump supporters didn’t and don’t mind the bad things he does to others, but are outraged when they and their loved ones are harmed. The people who voted for Trump in the most recent election had already experienced four years of his presidency and the January 6 insurrection attempt, heard his campaign threats about retribution and mass deportations, been informed about Project 2025—they knew the man, yet still chose to vote for him, so he must have been offering something they wanted. What they didn’t want or expect was for themselves to be hurt. Watson isn’t interested in allying with such a voter who “hasn’t fixed the problem in his own heart,” and that’s understandable, because until people develop a sense of empathy for others and care about what happens to them and not just their own suffering, they don’t have much to offer.