An Ethical Dilemma

The question at the end here is binary, which means it's simplistic given that there are so many factors to consider. But it offers an opportunity to think of something difficult. Ethical decision-making is almost never about determining an absolute right or wrong; it's all about weighing values, one good value competing against another good value.

__________________

Donald Trump is not responsible for all the 400,000 deaths - the number as of President Biden's inauguration on January 20, 2021 - attributable to Covid-19. But, because of his mismanagement of the pandemic, is he responsible for a portion of those 400,000? Researchers with Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness compared deaths in the U.S. with those from similar countries. Their report, written in October 2020, found that between “130,000 and 210,000” Americans need not have died from the coronavirus. For now, three months after the report was released - this is the first uncertain variable - let's say 200,000 lives were lost to Trump's decisions.

An autopsy report of the election, conducted by Trump's pollsters, recently concluded that Trump was, according to Politico, whose reporters read the full report, "crushed by disapproval of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic." (There were other factors, but that was the big one.) One way of looking at that: absent the pandemic Trump would have won election for a second term.

Liberals and other anti-Trump voters are happy about the election outcome. They think that - this is the second uncertain variable - another Trump term might well have been the ruin of the republic, that he would have continued to trash, and perhaps destroy, democratic norms, to say nothing of the institutions - the courts, federal agencies, the media, Congress itself - that play important roles in the way America has developed over the past two centuries.

But, how happy are those liberals? If it's true that Trump is responsible for 200,000 unnecessary deaths and if it's true that Trump would, with a second term, do incalculable damage to the country - an existential threat is how he and his policies have often been described - would it be better that those who died are alive and that Trump is president for four more years? Or were the 200,000 deaths well sacrificed? In the weighing of values - your values - what is more important? Those lives or protecting our republic?

As with many ethical dilemmas, the choice is unsettling - and, if you dig deep inside your values and honestly weight them, you most likely won't like the answer. But you'll like the alternative even less.