The New York Times traveled through Republican territory in Western Michigan and found plenty of conservative voters who appear disillusioned with President Donald Trump. Yet their response to the damage they helped unleash is not accountability, but political withdrawal.

Political prognosticator Charlie Cook has described the dynamic as “the red undertow.” These voters may not be supporting Democrats, but they could punish Republicans by voting against them or simply staying home during the midterms.

That may hurt the GOP, but the interviews also reveal something deeply frustrating. Some Trump voters who helped hand power to a reckless president now seem perfectly comfortable tuning out while other people live with the consequences.

“People are just more focused on everyday life,” Lindsay Kronemeyer, a conservative Christian mother of two, told the Times. “I don’t hear the chatter on the Republican side of ‘Trump this, Trump that.’ He’s just not there in my head anymore.”

Certainly, Republicans thinking less about Trump is preferable to continued devotion. But millions of people cannot simply focus on everyday life while facing deportation, hunger, job losses, vanishing farms, or the possibility of losing their homes.

Kronemeyer and voters like her opened the door for the political arsonist. Now they can shrug, wander away, and enjoy the luxury of detachment because their own homes were not necessarily the ones consumed by the blaze.

Jim Pasek, 80, has apparently reached the disgust phase of his Trump experience. “He’s not making sense,” Pasek told the Times. “It confuses me, and then I just get disgusted and tune out.”

Pasek voted for Trump twice, helping empower the chaos he now finds confusing. Apparently voting for Democrats to help clean up the destruction is a bridge too far, while retreating from the political process feels considerably easier.

Brandon Tremaine, 24, offered an even sharper explanation for his planned absence. “President Trump has been saying, ‘Vote as if I was on the ballot,’ and that’s exactly what I’m going to do—not vote,” he told the Times.

“You do not campaign on being the ticket of peace and start a war of choice that is directly hurting Americans here at home and gotten Americans killed overseas,” Tremaine continued. He is a graduate student who supported a president the article argues was already comfortable with war during his first term.

Staying home is better than continuing to vote Republican, but it still avoids responsibility. Tremaine helped create the political mess he now condemns, and declining to participate does nothing to demonstrate personal accountability for that choice.

The Times also spoke with Warren Stewart, 69, who restores old homes. Stewart said he likes to believe Trump is restoring the country, although he “is starting to have doubts” about whether that comforting comparison still works.

“Clients often get nervous when the project is only halfway through,” Stewart said, explaining that he reassures them he has a plan. According to the Times, Stewart now “wonders if Mr. Trump does too.”

Trump does not have a plan, and pretending otherwise only prolongs the damage. Yet Stewart said he would never vote for a Democrat, even as he described the financial pressure he is experiencing under Trump and the Republican Party.

“I just spent $60 on $30 worth of groceries and am about to go fill up for $5 a gallon,” Stewart told the Times. “It feels like they’re stress-testing us.”

That description assumes Trump and the GOP care enough about voters like Stewart to test them. The harsher reading offered by the article is that Republican leaders do not care about him enough to notice his struggle at all.

For disappointed Trump voters, tuning out may feel like an easy escape from a political choice that went badly. They can declare themselves confused, disgusted, or too occupied with ordinary life, then leave everyone else to handle the wreckage.

But political decisions carry consequences, and for many people those consequences can mean life or death. Conservatives may be able to ignore suffering that does not reach their own doorstep, but progressives do not have the luxury of abandoning those harmed by Republican rule.

If these voters refuse to support Democrats, their absence could still move the totals toward a Democratic victory. That is better than another Republican vote, but it is not courage, responsibility, or a serious attempt to repair what they helped break.