A bit of modesty from Redstate might be the beginning of the country reuniting. The diary begins with a recounting of an incident from The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It is heartening the diarist is even reading the book. The incident is about a Stalin ovation that went on for more than ten minutes because no one wanted to be the first to stop applauding. Finally, someone had to be the first, and that man was arrested the very same night.
It’s easy to suppose that such fits of insanity can never happen to us. Well. In a foreward to the version of the book I am reading, Solzhenitsyn writes:
There always is this fallacious belief: “It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.”
Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible anywhere on earth
…. We would be fools not to learn the lessons of history — not to be on the lookout for a repeat of such horror. Crying wolf is not just foolish. It is dangerous. But if the wolf has attacked in the past, it is equally foolish and dangerous not to watch for the warning signs that the wolf may approach again. … It’s relevant to Trump today because he’s president, but let’s not pretend this is a phenomenon that happens only on one side.
The humility part?
After all, we on the right really thought we had the left pegged as the people who followed a cult leader. And then Trump came along. It’s a little hard to be too smug now.
The Clickhole article is very funny. And yet: the phenomenon of a room full of people who all know they are supporting something crazy, but are all scared to say so, is a reality that has been no joke at times in human history.
On the other hand, some of the comments show a portion of Redstate’s readership missed the point, probably on purpose. Otherwise, the cognitive dissonance would be too overwhelming.