Universalism versus Nihilism: the True Divide in American Politics

Political discourse in the United States for the past quarter century has centered around narratives of polarization and a “red versus blue” divide. But every day in the second Trump administration seems to demolish conventional political wisdom, including those dynamics of polarization.

Recent weeks have featured a curious phenomenon: conservative commentators like David Brooks and William Kristol have issued calls for radical resistance to the Trump administration, with Brooks famously referencing the Communist Manifesto. Viewed through the red-blue prism this does not seem to make sense. How is it that lifelong Republicans are some of the pundits most vocally opposed to Trump?

The answer is that the current polarization is based less in political parties than in political values. The true battle being fought, in the US and elsewhere, is not left versus right but nihilism versus universalism. Trump and his ilk of populist nationalists do not believe in universal principles, the rule of law or human rights. Their worldview is rooted in the poles of blood and soil, and their one and only mission is to elevate the people like them and punish the people they have defined as enemies of their national project. There is no higher principle involved here whatsoever because they do not believe in anything other than getting what they want. 

This nihilism gives Trump and his minions the freedom to try to overturn an election, pardon criminals, arrest judges, deport US citizens, impound money spent by Congress, jail students for political speech, and render immigrants to a Salvadoran gulag. They are so shameless in their nihilism that they sent the Secretary of Homeland Security to said gulag for a photo shoot. The president openly brags about his intentions to render American citizens to the gulags, too. They post supposed ASMR videos of immigrants shackled in chains because they want to proclaim their nihilism to the world, not hide it behind platitudes. What was once done under “night and fog” is performed for the cameras in broad daylight. 

However, the brazenness of these actions cannot be overcome by mere partisanship. The dyed-in-the-wool conservatives criticizing Trump are doing so due to a commitment to something deeper than party loyalty: universalism. They actually believe in universal human rights and the rule of law. They, like most Americans, are small “l” liberals. Until the rise of populist nationalism, liberalism writ large had become a political consensus in the West. As Francois Furet said in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down, “The French Revolution is finally over.” Or so we thought. 

Universalism, rooted in the Enlightenment, holds that all people have dignity and are deserving of rights by the fact of being human beings. While its earliest proponents were notoriously bad about living up to their stated beliefs, their ideals have been the foundation of almost all of the positive political progress we have witnessed over the last two centuries. It’s the basis of the socialist ideal, which is rooted in the core belief that every single person deserves to live a dignified life. Universalism is thus the glue that can hold together people as disparate in ideology as David Frum and Bernie Sanders. 

While I am definitely on the Sanders side of the equation and was out there protesting against the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I am still heartened by neo-conservatives in 2025 jumping onto the anti-Trump bandwagon. To defeat Fascism 2.0 we are going to need a Popular Front 2.0 and to find the common causes that can unite a broad coalition. Some seem to think this will happen naturally via “kitchen table” issues once Trump’s tariff regime tanks the economy. While I think those issues will be important in upcoming elections, you can’t rally people to your cause with a narrative so shallow as “things are expensive.” Not long term, at least. Universalism allows people to be FOR something bigger, and history has proven time and again that people in this country will make tremendous sacrifices for higher ideals. 

In any case, it is imperative that the nihilism destroying our society be named and confronted directly if we are to have any kind of future. The cheating that pervades our society is a symptom of a people who have embraced the notion that the bottom line is the bottom line. Talk to any teacher and they will tell you academic dishonesty has become pervasive. Landlines have been rendered useless by scam calls. Talk to today’s best and brightest high school seniors and you will find that they are mostly motivated by getting into the “right” schools to get the “right” jobs and do not seem to think that learning itself has any inherent value. Why would they? They have been raised in a society that says that nothing has value apart from material wealth. 

Trump relates to this nihilism in a dialectical fashion, as his rise is the product of a loss of belief while also being the catalyst for it. From the start of his political career it was obvious even to his supporters that he was completely ignorant of the knowledge and bereft of the character once expected of a potential president. Even before being convicted of multiple felonies and trying to overthrow the government he had been known to stiff contractors, cheat on his spouse, sexually harass women, run a scam “university,” and run multiple businesses into the ground. Somehow, none of it mattered, as Trump himself famously gloated when he bragged that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue. Trump’s appeal was simple: I am going to elevate you and hurt the people you don’t like. His voters love the brazenness of his acts because they get to vicariously live them out. The selfish ethos of late capitalism tilled the ground to plant Trump’s nihilistic message, and Trump’s dominance of the public sphere for a decade has only fertilized it more. After ten years of this it is imperative that the nihilistic ethos Trump thrives on be openly rejected. 

The United States is a country founded upon universal ideals. It has never fully lived up to those ideals, but we are now seeing what it looks like when those ideals are not even given lip service. To steal another slogan, it’s either universalism or barbarism. Take your choice. 

Featured image is Eleanor Roosevelt and United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Spanish text.