Who are these men who gleefully carry out the orders of Trump?
BACKGROUND
1)Erwin Chermenensky, “Trump is targeting law firms and academia. Why don’t they speak up? A united stand would mean less reason to fear retribution,” Washington Post, April 3, 2025 (8:36 a.m. EDT).
Erwin Chemerinsky is the dean of the Berkeley School of Law at the University of California.
2)George Packer,”THE HOLLOW MEN; It takes a special talent to betray an entire worldview without missing a beat, The Atlantic, March 25, 2025(8:00 am ET).
2) T. S. Eliot (1888 –1965), “The Hollow Men (1925)”, poets.org;.
4)Mak Berman, ”Hundreds of law firms back Perkins Coie in fight against Trump sanctions; The largest U.S. firms did not join a court filing supporting Perkins Coie and denouncing President Trump’s orders targeting law firms, Washington Post,April 4, 2025 (Updated at 5:07 p.m. EDT).
Who are these men who gleefully support and carry out the outrages, the illegal and unconstitutional actions of Donald Trump?
We begin to realize, hopefully not too late, the truth of which we have neen warned for many years. Men and women are susceptible to the appeal of fascism.
Men sometimes welcome being told what to do. Men and women are happy at times to carry out orders to abuse other people. There may in fact be an inherent inclination in human beings in some circumstances to be cruel to others. Individuals may enjoy being cruel to other people, or even torturing them, or participating in a crowd that murders other people, sometimes in the hundreds or the thousands, and sometimes in the millions.
This inclination toward cruelty, and the desire to obey an authoritarian leader, are part of human DNA.
It is part of our human nature. Our human nature.
Only the civilizing influence of education, and the leading examples of civilized men and women, can direct these evil inclinations and defend against our vulnerabilities to the appeal of evil, so that we follow the path of civilization, so that that we comport ourselves as civilized human beings.
It is not always easy to be a leading example of civilized man..
It takes courage to stand up against a mob which is capitulating to an authoritarian leader.
Unfortunately, today we see little evidence of such courage among our political leaders, the leaders of big business, the leaders of big law firms, or among the leaders of top law schools and universities.
We are witnessing what in Germany in 1933 and afterwards was known as the Gleichschaltung. The great synchronization in which individuals and groups were forced to tune in to and get on the same frequency. Then it was the frequency of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. Today it is the frequency of Donald Trump and his fascist Republican Party.
It is a deeply sad spectacle to behold.
These men and women, who have now been synchronized with the frequency of Donald Trump and his fascist Republican supporters, are gleefully carrying out the destruction of our government, of its departments and programs,.They do so with at best indifference and in all probability with pleasure, as they destroy the lives of human beings they don’t even know.
Think of the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for a moment. Think of the deaths of small children and of AIDS victims, who will die–and may already be dying–because the USAID-funded or supplied food and medicines have been cut off.
Have Trump’s accomplices always been like this?
Didn’t they care at some earlier point in their lives about whether a baby lived or died?
Do they understand how they are not only cutting off the supply of food and medicines to individuals whose lives depend on these, but how they are also cutting off these people’s lives?
Who are these people executing the commands of Donald Trump and Elon Musk who take delight in the great destruction derby which they are perpetuating?
Where did our civilization fail them, where did we fail them, that they could gleefully participate in such barbaric actions?
Who is responsible for their Gleichschaltung?
Is it not every individual who failed to speak out against what he or she knew was wrong, or evil?
Is it not everyone who failed to call out the truth when monstrous lies were being told?
Who is responsible for this Gleichschaltung in America?
Read the op-ed by Erwin Chermenensky, above. While he addresses the cowardice in the law firms and law schools, similar cowardice is to be found in the press and the media, in he arts, and in other fields of endeavor.
Is it not every partner at a Big Law law firm who failed to stand up for truth and justice, who failed to speak out against Trump’s fascist threats to law firms, our justice system and the rule of law?
Is it not every big firm partner who caved in to Trump, or acquiesced in his or her Management Committee’s accommodation with the unconstitutional demands of Trump’s Executive Orders?
Is it not the leaders of every law firm which failed to file amicus briefs or otherwise express solidarity in cases brought by firms like Perkins Coie which challenged Trump’s actions in the courts?
Is it not every law school dean–--particularly at the “leading” schools like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford—who refused to sign a statement circulated by Berkeley Law School’s Dean Erwin Chermenensky, condemning Trump’s actions? See his article above.
The letter said, in part,
As deans of law schools, we have a special responsibility for the legal profession. Recently, the federal government has imposed significant sanctions othe law firms of Perkins Coie, Covington & Burling, Paul Weiss, and Jenner & Block seemingly because of the clients they and their lawyers represented and litigation in which their lawyers participated.
We write to reaffirm basic principles: The government should not punish lawyers and law firms for the clients they represent, absent specific findings that such representation was illegal or unethical. Punishing lawyers for their representation and advocacy violates the First Amendment and undermines the Sixth Amendment.
We thus speak as legal educators, responsible for training the next generation of lawyers, in condemning any government efforts to punish lawyers or their firms based on the identity of their clients or for their zealous lawful and ethical advocacy.
[Those signing are expressing their personal views and are not speaking for their
Who are these men and women who gleefully execute the commands of Donald Trump and Elon Musk?
Who are these university presidents who fail to take a common stand with other universities whose funding is arbitrarily cut off at President Trump’s whim?
Who are these men who gleefully support and carry out the outrages, the illegal and unconstitutional actions of Trump?
Or who fail to stand up, who fail to speak out?
And who through their acquiescence implicitly give their permission to these men to carry out the outrages, the illegal and unconstitutional actions of Trump?
***
James Rowles is a former Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and professor of international law at other universities.
He studied the history of Nazi Germany at Stanford, and has studied and worked on human rights, judicial reform, and access to justice projects in many countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and in Afghanistan and Russia. At Harvard Law School, he taught a course on “Law, Human Rights, and the Struggle for Democracy in Latin America”.At the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the OAS, he worked on human rights cases involving forced disappearances, executions, and torture in a number of authoritarian countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Recent Books by the Author
James P. Rowles, The Rape of American Democracy: Republican Actions and Democratic Failures, 2016-2021 (2024). Available on Amazon, and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
James P. Rowles, Don’t Be Stupid. Pay Attention, Damn It! Advice for Undecided Voters and Voters Leaning Toward Trump (2024). Available on Amazon,and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
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