In Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt’s debut novel, the narrator, Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus, is baffled by human nature. Marcellus resides in Sowell Bay Aquarium in Washington state. He is a highly intelligent octopus who has tons of secrets he would like to share but has no one to communicate with. The other animals he is in captivity with inside the aquarium have “blunt minds and rudimentary neural systems.” Whatever “dull conversations” he might have with them “are rarely worth the effort.” As a result, he is extremely lonely.

Marcellus quietly observes humans, those who work at the aquarium, and the thousands who visit the place. He finds that they are crammed full of secrets. He wonders: “How do they not explode?” The thing he realizes is that humans have extremely poor communication skills. He asks: “Why can humans not use their millions of words to simply tell one another what they desire?”

If only life were that straightforward. Most of us humans suffer from the condition that Marcellus finds puzzling. We have all kinds of thoughts and desires that, for a wide variety of reasons, we cannot easily express. Marcellus is right to be surprised by the extent to which we engage in this debilitating self-limitation.

Like Marcellus, I am starting to wonder what the people around President Trump actually feel about some of the things he is doing, and the manner in which he is going about them. There are many issues that need to be addressed urgently in this country, and the president deserves credit for calling attention to some of them. Unfortunately, whatever positive things he does are quickly undone by the chaos that he so constantly generates. His completely needless alienation of previously staunch allies, in particular, has caused long-term damage that will be extremely difficult to repair, if not impossible.

Some of the most senior officials in the Trump administration are seasoned Wall Street professionals. They must be fully aware that the president’s incoherent policies, reckless statements, and other actions that have destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth in the financial markets, have been an unmitigated disaster. And yet, no one seems to have the appetite to publicly say or do anything that could help limit the damage. Speaking truth to power is easier said than done. But there are times when the cost of remaining silent is so great that our public officials must be called upon to display some courage, rather than the natural tendency to prioritize self-preservation. We are in that moment as a nation.

Some people are reportedly making their voices heard, albeit behind closed doors. In every White House, there are competing factions vying for a president’s attention. Each of the warring cliques hopes to nudge him in their preferred policy directions. Some of President Trump’s economic advisers are said to have been so concerned about the damaging effects of his initial tariff plan that they rushed into the Oval Office to try and persuade him to reverse course, even if temporarily, when the main architect of the plan briefly stepped out of the room. Thankfully, they succeeded. The problem is that those same officials will never reveal their true feelings in public, leaving the rest of us in the dark. That is the thing that drives Marcellus nuts.

President Trump’s diehard supporters say that he is on the right path. They agree with him that we should be willing to endure some short-term pain in order to enjoy the promised long-term gains. The problem is that his cure looks and feels a lot worse than the disease. Any patient, no matter how ill they are, will think twice about taking any medication with side effects that are so severe that those adverse consequences may include death. Too many people see too many risks associated with the president’s tariff policies for their fears to be dismissed as partisan whining. I am all for allowing administrations the freedom to introduce and test their policies, but there is always the danger that those policies turn out to be outright wrong. That is often unknowable until irreversible damage has been done.

For that reason, some degree of humility is required on the part of this administration. The president and his advisers should take some time to listen to the many voices that are urging caution. Also, those senior officials who have any capacity to influence the president’s thinking should stand up and be counted. That would be a great service to the nation. Such audible expressions of actual feelings would also please Marcellus.