Unstoppable

George is looking down and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country. This is a great day for him. It’s a great day for everybody.

― Donald Trump

As he signed a bill that interferes with the free market, free-market maven Donald Trump this week alluded to economists' notion that "a rising tide lifts all boats" and implied the bill would repair race relations in our country.

Apologists for the president don't grasp the fact that, while a rising tide lifts some boats, many Americans are marooned―black ones disproportionately.

More accurately, Trump's apologists don't care that many Americans are marooned.

Those of us appalled by Trump―a majority of Americans―recognize on some level that he's refusing to acknowledge a social evil and is therefore guilty of passive injustice.

Trump's failure to protest an evident injustice is itself an injustice―an injustice his apologists are content with.

Philosophers have deployed such willful indifference, advocating instead the "doctrine of acts and omissions."

The doctrine goes: when you can see that acting or refusing to act will bring about a similar result, there's an ethical, if not practical, difference between acting and refusing to do so.

In short, omissions can be as wanton as commissions. In a pinch, there's no such thing as a "bystander:" refusing to act is negligence.

Champions of the doctrine point to moral quandaries like the famous "Trolley Problem:"

Suppose a runaway train is about to arrive at a branch in the tracks. Ahead on both branches are track workers; one worker on one branch, five on the other. All are oblivious to the oncoming train. If it continues on its course, the train will kill the five workers. Should you switch the train onto the branch with one worker? As a bystander, you can intervene, though it makes you a killer; or take no action and let the train do the killing. Which choice is right?

Philosopher Peter Singer would answer: you can't just stand by and watch; you should kill the single track worker. 

As he says in Practical Ethics, the Trolley Problem shows that, in the face of life-and-death consequences, "the conventionally accepted principle of the sanctity of human life is untenable."

Americans are angry at Trump and his apologists because, while they lean on the brain-dead myth of the free market, they're blithefully ignorant of the consequences of racism in America.

But we're not ignorant and we're no longer bystanders. We know what's right―and where to send the runaway train. No one wants to run the president over; just vote him out.