Naming Moral Injury
- Poulsbo For All
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
March 22, 2026
Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who judiciously investigated Russia’s assault on the 2016 election, died Friday night after a battle with Parkinson’s. Trump shared his comments on the passing of this American hero by tweeting: ‘Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead.’ And today, the President of the United States with the character to utter such a statement is now sending ICE to our nation’s airports, supposedly to augment the dwindling ranks of unpaid TSA agents. But we know why he’s really sending his private militia to take over airport security.
It is difficult to bear what this regime is doing to us, those of us who are conscious and not in denial. We’re cursed with not only consciousness but conscience, aware of the horrors in our present and the worse horrors yet to come. Some of the catastrophes we face:
- Voter suppression tactics leading to the disaster of unimpeded executive power,
- A strong likelihood that elections will be cancelled on the basis of some made-up emergency,
- A rapid descent into economic depression and chaos, the loss of existential security for most Americans—loss of jobs, food, housing, health care, energy for heating, cooling, and transportation, and–for anyone lucky enough to have them--savings, pensions and retirement funds,
- An environment of rabid racism and violent hate attacks on our fellow humans for being the wrong color or the wrong religion, loving the wrong person, being an immigrant, poor, disabled, old, or a woman, or just disagreeing with Trumpism,
- War everywhere, revolutions and brutal repression, global instability on all levels, - And the thing we seemingly never have time to mourn: climate change--tornadoes and hurricanes and floods and droughts and unbearable heat, rapidly making our beautiful Earth an unlivable planet for the generations to come.
All this is happening right now. How do we carry on while burdened with the understanding that the nation’s “leaders” are not only raiding our public coffers, but at the same time are taking over, looting, and destroying other countries to enrich themselves even more while the world’s ordinary people simply try to get by? How do we continue intact while the mad king demands that we submit and comply?
We are experiencing a phenomenon called moral injury. Moral injury is the psychological and spiritual impact of witnessing, perpetrating, or failing to prevent acts that violate our deeply held moral beliefs. It leads to feeling intense guilt, shame, and betrayal, often resulting from impossible choices where nothing we can do aligns with our ethics. Certainly, the horrors of Trumpism listed above constitute deep insults to our notions of right and wrong. Moral injury is a real thing; it’s been defined and understood for decades in the healthcare and military professions. Moral injury is an ethical or spiritual crisis. You have to follow military orders and shoot a pregnant woman villager; or you have to watch a patient die for lack of approval by their insurance provider. Moral injury damages you as deeply as any physical wound.
There are natural responses to moral injury: you feel de-moralized, you feel shame, and you have a strong desire to withdraw from it all: does this sound familiar? However, withdrawing just makes you feel worse, in isolation, more and more hopeless. So what can we do?
The first big step is to name moral injury as we experience it, and understand that it’s real. Then, after recognizing it for what it is, in order to confront it and stop it from causing further injury to us, be in community. Gather, make intentional space to talk about what’s going on and to understand together that the administration’s acts are transgressions despite what Trump and mainstream media are saying. To counter moral injury, we continue to engage in activism, show up for social justice. We refuse to be silent. We do new things and hard things. We hold each other up. With full knowledge of the stakes, we cultivate a sense of humor, we wear frog suits and laugh at the outrageous craziness and make fabulous signs for rallies. Think of the existing system, the ideology and acts of Trumpism, as a dam. Each one of us is a small hole or crack in the dam, letting drops of water pass through to the other side. But we are many, and so rivulets and streams form; and then chunks start to break loose from the dam, with torrents soon rushing through until eventually the water can wash away the whole damn dam. We can put our outrage at Trump’s moral injuries to use!
Instead of passively, helplessly watching Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth fortify the dam, we can work on dismantling it with our small but mighty powers. We have the numbers to do it. That’s how to heal both our own souls and, eventually, the soul of the nation. This is why it’s so important to bring everyone you know to a NO KINGS 3 rally on Saturday 3/28, whether it’s in Poulsbo or Kingston, in Bremerton or Bainbridge or Seattle or elsewhere. Let us recognize and name the deep moral injury of this sickness of Trumpism, and let’s get all our neighbors to show up and march for democracy! Remember that historically when 3 ½ percent of a population hits the streets to protest, they can start to bring down that dam. Together we can do it!
Additional links for further reading:
Comments