Andrew Fiala, Ph.D.

People seem to need icons and idols. Children can learn from heroic tales that simplify and magnify virtue. But adults should outgrow hero worship. The challenge of adulthood is to live in a world of broken idols. At some point you discover the wisdom of tragedy, which is that no one is perfect and that it is folly to treat any human being as if they were a saint.

This tragic insight can be used to argue against cults and cliques that develop around gurus and demagogues. Authoritarian regimes often magnify charismatic charmers. But these authoritarian idols are among the most hollow. They explode upon contact with the hammer of critical thought.

In a column from a few years ago, I argued against the “great man” view of the world. The idea that any human being is indispensable or worthy of worship is authoritarian. As I argued there, “Hero worship turns mere mortals into idols. And often we are stuck with our champions, unable to free ourselves from their grip on power.” I concluded there: “Every human hero has feet of clay and an expiration date.”

The Trumpian Pedestal and The Chavez Cancellation

The cancellation of Chavez occurred almost immediately. It was surprising how quickly public opinion turned against him. Soon after the Times article was published, people worked diligently to purge his name and image from public places.

Here at Fresno State University, there was a Chavez monument outside the library in our “Peace Garden.” The day after the Times published its piece, the statue was covered with a large wooden box. The next day it was removed. Something similar happened across the country, with immediate calls to cancel celebrations organized in Chavez’s name, to rename streets that had been named after him, and so on. In Sacramento, the state legislature plans to change “Cesar Chavez Day” to “Farmworker’s Day.”

The speed of this purge was astounding. But in general, this is how news that shames the powerful should be treated. When the misdeeds of our heroes are exposed, we should all be ashamed. And broken icons should be removed.

Unfortunately, there is a counter-narrative at large in the world of Trumpian hero worship. Despite the flaws in Trump’s character—and despite the fact that history is not yet done with the man—he and his followers are working diligently to turn him into an icon. As I argued elsewhere, the movement to slap Trump’s name and image on things must be understood as hubris, which is a “vice of the heights.” The higher the pedestal, the more likely the fall.

Our eagerness to remove Chavez may be fueled in part by this rival Trumpian apotheosis. The more Trumpian our world becomes, the more we react with dismay when we learn of the shameful misdeeds of powerful men not named Trump. With Chavez, at least, we seem to understand the wisdom of Nietzsche’s hammer.

There Are No Heroes

In seeking heroes to lionize, we set ourselves up for failure. There are no heroes. No human being is beyond reproach. No one is so perfect that they deserve to be immortalized or turned into a statue. And certainly, once the statues exist, we should refrain from venerating them.

And here in the twilight, we should consider the other broken idols of the American sculpture garden. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison owned slaves. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not perfect. Nor was John F. Kennedy. And so it goes.

The paradox of the paragon ought to prevent us from erecting statues and naming things in honor of human beings. Let’s stop idolizing mortal men.

The Bible’s warnings against idolatry have often been misunderstood. The problem was not only that the Israelites were worshiping false gods. They were also worshiping statues made by men. But there are no human creations worthy of our worship. All human creations are flawed.

The crooked timber of humanity cannot be made straight (as Kant once put it). It is a fool’s errand to attempt to transform human beings into icons. This may sound like a depressing conclusion. But after we take up the hammer of critique, the next step is to live as well and as wisely as we can without heroes, gurus, and false idols.

The Greek comedian Aristophanes mocked corrupt demagogues as greasy sausage-sellers, who belch forth malice and offer libations to the God of Stupidity. Aristophanes joked that these scoundrels lubricate their bodies with lard, fart in each others faces, and crap in each others shoes. The “ignoramuses and rogues” who rule over cities wallow in graft, and start wars to control the price of anchovies.

In the Bible, corruption is connected to the worm of sin. The prophet Micah writes that corrupt kings cannibalize the people, eat their flesh, break their bones, and chop them up like meat in a cauldron. The Apostle Paul is more subtle. In First Corinthians, Paul uses a metaphor of “the yeast of malice and evil” to describe how a dash of something sinister can mushroom. His solution is to consume only “the unleavened bread of truth and sincerity.”

These metaphors provide visceral reminders of how corruption works. If the kitchen stinks, the food will too. The same is true in social life. Teams and groups are ruined by bad apples and rotten eggs.

Putrification spreads most rapidly when it comes from the top. Rancid leaders are ruinous. An old idiom holds that “fish rot from the head.” This means that putrid leadership infects everything.

Moral Taint and Cognitive Contamination

The term “moral taint” is used by philosophers to describe how evil spreads. This is a complex phenomena that overlaps with concepts like “vicarious liability” and “collective responsibility.” We should be careful in thinking about moral taint, since it can unfairly lead to “guilt by association.” As I noted in my newspaper column, the ancient idea of being “cursed” functions like that.

We don’t inherit evil from our ancestors. But bad people usually make others worse. Villains incite wickedness. And vicious people undermine virtue.

Something similar happens with incompetence and stupidity. Viral idiocy can can spread across social groups. Online this is known as “en-shittification.” A chain reaction of imbecilic ideas can fester and defile everything.

When stupidity mushrooms we might call this “cognitive contamination” or “epistemic taint.” The point is familiar from Plato’s allegory of the “ship of fools.” If you surround yourself with idiots, you risk becoming dumber.

The Trump Taint

Moral taint is made obvious in the sordid world of the Epstein files, in which pedophiles and corrupt power-brokers shared their depravity and egged each other on. We can observe something similar in the proliferation of ethical irregularities and corruption in the world of Donald Trump and his cronies.

As I noted in another recent column on the Iran war, “Trump’s flawed character taints everything.” You cannot trust that the President is either wise or virtuous. He is known for “the weave” and for “truthful hyperbole,” which basically means he is a bullshitter and conman. Elon Musk suffered from his association with Trump, as did the U.S. men’s hockey team. Trump taints nearly everything he touches. People in his orbit typically end up worse.

Ironically, Trump said something similar about Biden. At a 2024 campaign rally: “Everything Joe Biden touches turns to shit, everything.” As I explained in my column, this is a bit like a skunk complaining about garlic; and it is possible they both stink.

But the larger moral lesson is clear. It is wise to avoid people with the reverse Midas touch.

The Sycophantic Doom Loop

Things go downhill fast when a closed circle of sycophants all sings the same song in honor of the sausage-seller. Sycophants cause corruption to mushroom.

A trivial example can be found in the strange case of the White House shoes. President Trump gave his cabinet members matching shoes. The Wall Street Journal reports that one official commented, “Everyone’s afraid not to wear them.”

If cabinet members are afraid to say anything about the emperor’s new shoes, what else are they afraid to say—about tariffs, elections, or war?

The sycophantic doom loop is an extreme way that moral taint devolves. More generally, stupid, incompetent, and wicked people prefer to surround themselves with like-minded folks who gladly book passage on the ship of fools. Once on board the moronic bandwagon, it can be difficult to regain your decency or common sense.

Paul Krugman touched upon this in a column about the Iran war. Krugman suggest that in Trump’s second term, “Trump learned that in choosing his political hires the more incompetent, the more venal, the more bigoted, and the more cruel, the better.”

Inspired by Goodness

Corrupt organizations don’t want virtuous talent. Villains and dummies prefer a team of tainted cronies. Upright and serious folks have little interest in working on such a team. And so, corruption grows.

One solution is obvious. Stay away from villains and dopes. Step off of the moronic bandwagon. Disembark from the ship of fools. Clean out the kitchen. Fire the sausage-sellers. Elect less putrid leaders. And stop toasting the God of Stupidity.

But avoidance is negative. So, let’s conclude with a more positive idea. Pope Francis once said, “If evil is contagious, so is goodness. Let us be infected by goodness.”

That’s a memorable phrase. But goodness is not an infection, it is the antidote to corruption. Find better friends. Build better teams. Fill your mind with wisdom, and your soul with higher things. It is not enough to avoid contamination. You also need to seek the good. To inspire others who have been infected by evil and tainted by stupidity you must seek the true gold of wisdom and share the wholesome bread of virtue and truth.

Wars are not won by propaganda. The fog of war obscures much. So it was disturbing to hear the Secretary of Defense proclaim after just a few days of war, “America is winning decisively, devastatingly and without mercy.” In truth, however, history takes a long time to write. It wise to avoid jumping to conclusions about decisive victory. And morality recommends mercy over devastation.

Trumpian propaganda extends beyond claims about merciless courage toward assertions about the holiness of Trump’s Iran war. It was recently reported that some soldiers claim this is a religious war and that Donald Trump is “anointed by Jesus” to bring about the end times. This allegation provoked calls for a Congressional investigation. And outside the military, some Christian commentators have been cheering the war in apocalyptic terms. Trump does tend to view himself as divinely ordained. As I discussed in a previous column, the President has said God saved him from an assassin’s bullet in order to carry out God’s plan.

Whether Trump or his sycophants really believe any of this is beyond me. I tend to view this as all obvious exaggeration, akin to the bunkum peddled by hucksters and conmen. As Trump explained in The Art of the Deal, he uses “truthful hyperbole” to “play to people’s fantasies.” I criticized this idea in detail in my Trump book.

The fantasies about Armageddon show us how Trumpian hyperbole can become dangerous and delusional. When sycophants suck up to the most powerful man on earth, suggesting he is on a mission from God—or that he belongs in the pantheon of greatness—the peril is obvious.

Fakery and Confusion

All of this fantasy and fakery leads to confusion. The hallucinations of the Trump era extend to fundamental claims about the truths of American history, nonsensical disputes about science and medicine, and tendentious data that supposedly supports the greatness of the President. In this phantasmagorical atmosphere, Trumpian sycophants suck up to the President in ways that are impossible to take seriously. But Trump is tickled to receive these fawning tributes, even when they are obvious bullshit.

Which brings us back to Trump’s fake Nobel Peace Prize. As we all know, he did not earn the prize. Rather, he was given the prize by the Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was awarded the Nobel in 2025. It seems that Ms. Machado gave Trump the prize in honor of his attack on Venezuela. Trump claimed he deserved the prize for supposedly ending eight wars—even as he started new ones.

Leaving aside the irony of a peace prize going to a warmonger, I want to emphasize here the President’s hubristic desire for accolades, even when he clearly does not deserve them. Examples of this include the phony FIFA peace prize, the effort to emblazon Trump’s name on all kinds of public entities, and Trump’s self-appointment as chairman to his newly minted “League of Peace.”

We might also consider the President’s strange fetish regarding the Congressional Medal of Honor. Among the fantastical things that President Trump said during his 2026 State of the Union address was that he always wanted the Medal of Honor. Prior to the State of the Union, at a speech in Georgia, Trump said:

I flew to Iraq. I was extremely brave. So brave I wanted to give myself the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Trump is oddly enamored (might we say envious?) of the accolades of actual medal of honor recipients, who are recognized for “valor in combat.” Commentators noted that Trump never served in the military, and that there was no combat when he visited Iraq. But of course, Trump bragged, “I was extremely brave.”

The President suggested he was joking when he made those remarks in Georgia. But the idea that Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize also seemed like a joke, until Trump attacked Venezuela and somehow persuaded Machado to give him her medal.

And here is the danger of Trump’s apparent fascination with the Congressional Medal of Honor. His fantasy of himself is that he is “extremely brave.” The White House website flatters this conceit by quoting a litany of fawning praise extolling his courage in declaring war on Iran. Nowhere in any of this is there a serious discussion of the ethics of war, international law, or the brutal reality of modern warfare.

Seeing Through the Fog

I am not suggesting that Trump started the war against Iran merely to prove his courage and win a prize. Nor do I want to believe that Trump’s self-absorption is so complete that he would declare war simply to flatter his own ego (but readers may draw their own conclusions…). I would hope, rather, that the institutions of government work to prevent such stupidity, although we may well wonder whether this is true in an era in which the ordinary checks and balances of the republic appear to be broken.

There are some plausible rationales for this war. Even if I do not agree with the conclusion of those arguments, some think that the Iran war can be justified for preventive or humanitarian purposes. I critically examined the explicit rationales for the Iran war in another column.

The problem is, of course, that Trump’s flawed character taints everything. Is the Iran war personal for the President or is it really about authentic claims of justice? We don’t really know because Trumpian hubris is as mystifying as the fog of war.

The propaganda about the war is bewildering because Trumpianism is morally incomprehensible. This includes the basic paradox of the idea that one can create world peace by waging war as the President has proposed. All of this confusion is exacerbated by the fact that the President and his sycophants are obsessed with mythic valor, phony accolades, and merciless fantasies about Armageddon.

When war and peace are on the table, we should stop with the foolishness and seek wisdom with humility. All of the braggadocio and braying nonsense about world-changing valor and ruthless victory clouds critical thought.

Plato taught that true courage is only found in an integrated soul. There is supposed to be unity among the virtues grounded in wisdom and truth. Courage becomes madness when it is not linked to justice, moderation, and mercy.

Some may believe that a gilded ass is really the lord of the savannah. Others may believe that Jesus is using Trump to usher in Armageddon. But the Bible reminds us that wisdom is humble, and that foolishness leads to ruin.

The President began by suggesting the attack on Iran would be a defensive and preemptive war: “to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats.” Defensive war is the primary rationale for justified warfare in the just war tradition. States are permitted to respond to attacks with defensive force. It is also widely held that states are permitted to preempt imminent threats. However, the case for preemption is more difficult to make than the case for defense against aggressive attack.

The President’s case for preemptive war also pointed in the direction of what scholars call “preventive war.” He listed a number of atrocities committed by Iran and its proxies, as evidence of the threat posed by the Iranian “terrorist regime.” There is no doubt that the Iranian regime is responsible for atrocity, including the slaughter of thousands of protesters in Iran last month. The list of Iranian atrocities is relevant to the case for preventive war, as it shows a pattern in Iran’s past actions. But preventive war is even harder to justify than preemptive war, as we’ll see in a moment.

There is a risk, moreover, that outrage over past atrocities will provoke a war of revenge that responds to atrocity with further atrocity. The just war tradition aims to prevent the escalatory spiral of revenge. The threat of escalation also occurs when casualties are incurred and the war aim is linked to a desire to avenge these deaths. It is natural to desire that our soldiers should not die in vain. But this way of thinking can become self-justifying. After wars begin, the rationale shifts to avenging deaths caused by the war itself. The problem of the “sunk-cost fallacy” kicks in and we continue to fight because we are already fighting.

Preventive War, Humanitarian Intervention, and Regime Change

The President warned that Iranian long-range missiles “could soon reach the American homeland.” Trump said he was going to “annihilate” and “obliterate” Iranian military power, while ensuring that Iran will “never have a nuclear weapon.” This is “preventive war,” aimed at eliminating hypothetical threats before they become imminent. In the scholarship on the ethics of war, preventive war is problematic. War may be justified preemptively, if we are certain that an attack is imminent. But preventive war introduces the threat of escalation based upon uncertain and hypothetical concerns. Preventive war is perilous because it kills in the name of speculative threats.

President Trump further encouraged members of the Iranian armed forces to “lay down their arms” or “face certain death.” He said he was presenting the Iranian people with an opportunity to rise up and seize power. This shifted the justification toward “humanitarian intervention” and “regime change.” Humanitarian intervention may be justified in order to defend people against their own governments. Scholars argue that major powers have a “responsibility to protect”: those who have the power to prevent atrocities should act to do so. This is a reasonable idea. And Iran’s slaughter of its own citizens is relevant. But humanitarian intervention is difficult, and it often leads to “regime change,” which is what Trump is suggesting here. Regime change is exceedingly difficult to accomplish, as we’ve seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is likely impossible without extended occupation and a substantial effort at reconstruction.

Crusading Warfare

Another rationale for war implicit in the President’s speech was a kind of religious justification. Trump asked God to protect American soldiers and said “with His help, the men and women of the armed forces will prevail.” He concluded by invoking God’s blessings. It is fairly typical of political leaders to invoke God when going to war. The gravity of war points in this direction. However, it is worth noting that there is a risk of crusading wars. The crusading spirit appears when we view the enemy as evil. Trump said of the Iranians in his speech, “They just wanted to practice evil.” This kind language can lead to excessive violence.

Defensive or preemptive warfare is quite different from a war against evil or a war in God’s name. I am not suggesting that Trump is actually declaring a crusade. But Trumpianism is linked to the call for religious revival and the rise of Christian nationalism (as I discuss here). In his recent State of the Union speech, the President touted what he called a “tremendous renewal in religion, faith, Christianity and belief in God.” It remains to be seen how religious justifications for the war in Iran will play out. But we should note that the just war tradition emerged as a critique of the violence of the Crusades. Crusading wars tend to foster excessive violence, as righteous warriors engage in eschatological battles about religious ideology.

World Peace?

Finally, it is worth considering a further rationale provided by President Trump, which is the goal of creating world peace. In a social media post celebrating the killing of Iranian leader Ali Khamenei, the President added a further goal to the prior rationales of defensive, preemptive, and humanitarian war. He wrote:

The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!

This may appear to be a noble idea: to create peace in the Middle East and in the world. But pacifists have long pointed out the absurdity of building peace by way of obliteration (a word that Trump seems to use quite often). This would be the “peace of the graveyard.” One way to create peace, after all, is to kill everyone. But peace by obliteration is obviously immoral. It is worrying that the President says here that the killing will continue “as long as necessary” to create peace in the world. This might mean that we will kill until there is no one left to fight back.

The scholarship of peace suggests a distinction between negative peace and positive peace that can help us think about Trump’s grandiose objective of world peace. “Negative peace” is a state in which there is no direct or overt violence. We see negative peace when there is a truce, a cease-fire, détente, or stalemate: the killing stops even though enmity and hostility may remain. This war will likely end with some kind of truce or stalemate, which is worth considering as a reasonable outcome. But “positive peace” is much deeper and more robust: it includes mutual respect, justice, hospitality, and even love. When poets and prophets dream of “peace on earth” or “world peace” they typically aspire toward something like positive peace.

Positive peace is not obtainable by way of obliteration. Reflecting the wisdom of the pacifist tradition, Barry Gan has explained, “peace can only be sought by peaceful means.” Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way in his 1967 Christmas sermon: “If we are to have peace in the world, men and nations must embrace the nonviolent affirmation that ends and means must cohere.” And the U.N. Secretary General said of the Iran war, “Lasting peace can only be achieved through peaceful means.”

War obliterates enemies; but it does not convert or persuade them. Positive peace requires a change of heart and a transformed way of being. War cannot change hearts or transform thinking. It only aims at coercion. In order to accomplish this, it produces suffering and death. And it is not only the soldiers who suffer and die. Civilians are killed. Children are orphaned. Institutions are decimated. Infrastructure is destroyed. And even among victorious soldiers there is post-traumatic stress and “moral injury.” Genuine, positive peace must be achieved by nonviolent means.

Critical Thinking and the Critique of War

Much more could be said about the ethics of war and peace. I discuss these issues in more detail in The Just War Myth, in my Stanford Encyclopedia article on “Pacifism,” in my book, Transformative Pacifism, and in my book with Jennifer Kling.

We could also say more about the politics of President Trump’s war against Iran. Some critics have suggested that this war is a distraction from domestic political problems or that Trump is somehow trying to enrich himself through this war. Others have complained that Congress has not been consulted, and that this unilateral war subverts the international community and violates international law.

Those critiques are relevant. But the moral questions are different from the political, legal, and pecuniary questions. My goal here has been to think carefully about President Trump’s explicit rationale for war. As this war unfolds, we all need to think more carefully about the difficult moral question of the justification of war.