Newsletter: Believe your own eyes and ears on Trump. You might even laugh a little

Good morning. It is Saturday, Feb. 15. Let’s look back at the week in Opinion.

There’s a word I’m starting to hear in the discourse (if you can call it that) over Donald Trump’s nearly four-week-old presidency: stupid. A letter writer mentioned it in reaction to the president’s promise to “bring God back,” specifically regarding German dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s proposition that mass stupidity — which he described as a kind of persistent, willful ignorance — enabled the rise of Adolf Hitler. Commentator Steve Schmidt, who managed John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, used the s-word prodigiously in a recent discussion with Charlie Sykes to rail against the spate of outlandish orders and policies emanating from the Trump White House.

And I’m here for that kind of discourse, debased as it might have been for another political moment. Simply put, it fits our time and serves two purposes. First, it grounds us in the values we all accepted (or at least many of us did) before Trump took over the Republican Party in 2016, when it went without saying that unrepentant convicted criminals were unfit for the presidency and riots inside the U.S. Capitol were bad. Back then, journalist Sarah Kendzior, an expert on dissident movements in totalitarian states, suggested we all write down our beliefs now because authoritarians cajole us slowly into accepting realities we had thought outlandish before they came along. Useful exercise!

Second, labeling obviously foolish (or illegal, or frightening, or cruel) policies thus trains us to believe our own ears and eyes when a leader does dangerous things. One of the more remarkable things about the last nine years has been this president’s ability to get seemingly smart politicians and commentators to say some version of “no, but” when he makes a plainly stupid statement. Surrogates spin their masters’ mistakes all the time, but watching some contort themselves to explain away unacceptable behavior in the Trump era has been a sight to behold. It’s as if they spent their childhoods acquiring values not so they could recognize wrongdoing and stop it, but to apologize for it shamelessly.

So when the Trump administration guts the FBI after the president tells us he’ll “make America safe again,” believe the voice inside your head screaming, “This makes no sense!” Columnist Jackie Calmes also helpfully reminds us: It’s a broken promise.

And when de facto deputy president Elon Musk calls the U.S. Agency for International Development a “criminal organization,” trust your own gut feeling that feeding hungry people and building democracy-nurturing institutions are about the furthest things from criminal activity our government does. And, as columnist Robin Abcarian argues, crippling our country’s most important foreign aid agency will have dire consequences worldwide, including for us.

I’ll throw in a bonus reason for obeying the base instinct to call out Trump’s unadorned foolishness: It makes it a lot easier to laugh at him.

And now, for the rest of the week in Opinion ...

Signposts on the road to authoritarian rule. UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky identifies key developments in democracies that signal a slide into autocracy: Checks and balances go away, laws are brazenly ignored, government purges ensue, court rulings come under attack and dissent is chilled. Check, check, check, check and check.

Love it or hate it, Trump’s zone-flooding can’t go on forever. I wish I had columnist Jonah Goldberg’s confidence in the pull of political gravity, but reading his piece on the first weeks of Trump’s second presidency provides some measure of reassurance, especially his kicker: “The window of appearing unchecked and in command of the agenda will close sooner rather than later.”

Out on the streets to count L.A.’s unhoused, volunteers learn far more than numbers can convey. This is how we count our unhoused residents: Volunteers fan out on the streets, making note of the tents and cars with people living in them (but never lifting a tent flap or otherwise disturbing those inside). Other times, volunteers speak with people at bus stops and other public areas, some of whom identify themselves as homeless. “This is an imperfect venture, of course,” says The Times’ editorial board. “But there is no other undertaking that brings out roughly 5,000 volunteers over three nights not just to see homeless people but to feel the cold air and walk through the darkness.”

L.A.’s huge investment in recovery should benefit many Angelenos, not just a few. The fires in Altadena and Pacific Palisades affected primarily single-family residences in areas with home values averaging more than $1 million. Cynthia Strathmann, executive director of Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, writes that while fire survivors deserve assistance, we must not lose sight of the fact that much of Los Angeles already lives in a perpetual state of loss, with homelessness and poverty rampant: “As we rebuild, we must direct public resources toward those who need them the most, and toward the places where they will do the most good.”

From guest contributors

• I’m glad Trump and the courts are squaring up. We’re overdue for a civics lesson
• Trump’s antisemitism executive order mistakes dissent for bigotry
• Can we finally stop talking about trans sports?
• Do more than clear brush. Garden for fire

Letters to the editor

• The big picture on Trump might be darker than anyone realizes
• $500,000 for three months’ work: What was Mayor Karen Bass thinking?
• Hey, California bashers, the numbers don’t lie: We’re doing OK here
• Where fire experts have told us for decades not to build