Have you no sense of decency?


In the mythology of modern American politics, few figures are as nefarious as Roy Cohn. As the legal architect of Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist crusade, a close associate of Nixon and Reagan, and later a mentor and personal advisor to Donald Trump, Cohn didn't just practice law: he shredded the law and turned it into a weapon that, in some hands, served not as the hand but as the weapon, but as the hand.
In his time, Cohn helped destroy reputations and careers by unleashing panic over alleged communist infiltration. Accusations could outweigh evidence, fear more than facts, and thus control the public imagination.
His legacy is the persecution of opponents disguised as patriotism. But the surprising thing is not that his tactics were effective then, in the midst of the Cold War, but that they are still effective today—resurrected, reformulated, and applied by his most advanced disciple, who holds the highest office in the US, or imitated by Hispanic apprentices.
Donald Trump learned from Roy Cohn not only to denounce and counterattack, to intimidate and never apologize, but to turn politics into a moral tale with a permanent and monstrous enemy. For McCarthy, the enemy was the communist. For Trump, it is the immigrant, the intellectual, the journalist, the judge. Cohn taught him three golden rules: never back down, never admit mistakes, always attack.
Trump is turning entire communities into political targets. Immigrants are no longer people but security threats; Muslims, terrorist risks; foreigners, criminals; asylum seekers, "invaders"; the press, "enemies of the people." Disagreement is treason, and dissent is a crime.
This way of doing things, based on fear, division, and constant attack, draws directly from the McCarthy era, when fear of the "other" justified purges, blacklists, and public humiliation. Back then, it was the Red Scare. Today, it's the enemy of the Trumpist soul.
Roy Cohn was eventually disbarred and discredited, but his method has survived. Trump has shown that fear still works, that the architecture of persecution can be adapted to the digital age, with continuous newscasts and messages reduced to a few characters in striking capital letters on social media that feed an endless loop of rage. The stage is on mobile phones instead of congressional hearings. But what is being eroded in this process is something much more valuable than a specific law or a specific policy: it is trust—in the government, in the facts, in each other.
Democracy depends on trust. It requires citizens who believe in the integrity of institutions, in the legitimacy of dissent, in the protection of minorities and dissenters. It requires a politics that sees the opposition not as the enemy, but as part of the shared civic ground.
Rejecting the politics of Cohn and Trump doesn't just mean rejecting their tactics. It means rejecting the idea that anything goes. It means affirming, against all cynicism, that trust is not a weakness, but the foundation of the best possible politics: one that listens rather than accuses, that persuades rather than avenges, and that governs not through fear but through dignity.
Cohn destroyed the lives of many. He campaigned harshly against homosexuals before dying of AIDS and never admitting his private life. He defended mobsters and made money, but it also gave rise to a famous dignified gesture in the US. In one of the televised hearings in which Cohn and McCarthy accused the US military of being "soft" on communists, the army lawyer, Joseph Welch, discredited McCarthy by asking him the most famous question in the history of public congressional hearings: "Have you no sin of decency, sir?" [Have you no sense of decency, sir?]
I listen to José María Aznar and I recognize the Cohn spirit. Negotiable. I feel the defense of a model of society that would make El Cid Campeador pale, and I ask myself: have you no sense of decency?