“If politicians and their constituents always acted to promote their own or their country’s long-range self-interest, this world would be an earthly paradise. As it is, they often act against their own interests, merely to gratify their least creditable passions; the world, in consequence, is a place of misery.”
Aldous Huxley, BRAVE NEW WORLD REVISITED
“The world of today is a bare, hungry, dilapidated place compared with the world that existed before 1914, and still more so if compared with the imaginary future to which the people of that period looked forward.”
George Orwell, 1984
During Donald Trump’s presidency, a pandemic serious enough to cripple a strong economy buried news about other dangerous circumstances: America’s loss of respect and trust in the world; strategic gains for authoritarians and serious threats to democracy worldwide and here at home; the monumental increase of plutocrats’ wealth and power; worsening climate change, when the solutions are within reach; among others. Take away the cult of personality and Trump’s four-year reign is an obvious disaster. Yet despite Trump’s mishaps, some political insiders are predicting a monstrous rebound for Trump's party in the 2022 election, and quite possibly Trump’s return to power in 2024. Congressional Republicans have no strategy beyond their lockstep refusal to cooperate with Democrats on any and all efforts to restore a functioning society. The few Republicans who try to work across the aisle face not only ruined political careers, but physical threats to themselves and their families. Though most Democratic policy proposals are popular even with Republican voters, Republican elected officials who block progress seemingly fear no reprisals from their constituents. Apparently, half the American electorate is unconcerned about the country’s continuing downward spiral into social and economic disfunction. Some of these “freedom loving” Americans actually seem to be looking forward to it.
Rightwing politicians surprise no one by voting against appropriations for the country’s well-being; they receive generous campaign contributions from wealthy oligarchs who are quite happy with growing inequality. But why would average Americans elect and re-elect the same politicians who have for years helped oligarchs rob them? If logic has no answers, emotions must play a part. For proof we need only to look at the faces in the crowd at a Trump rally, or the rioters at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Participants in these events display a collective current of mutual anger, cruel amusement at other people’s misfortunes, cheers for revenge upon all who disagree with them—and absence of rational thought. The resentful enthusiasm shared by the revelers at these events are the same emotions Hitler stirred up at Nuremberg—reminiscent of Orwell’s two-minute hates. After each joyful event, exultant devotees go their separate ways feeling renewed kinship—mutual relief from isolation in a cruel world that reverently enforces the creed of “every man for himself.” In a throng that dresses, acts, and speaks the same, that loves and hates the same things, they can feel part of something larger than their isolated selves.
The human instinct to belong to a greater group conflicts with another human yearning for personal acquisition or accomplishment. Balance is hard to attain, and the struggle can cause exhaustion, frustration, discontent, and overriding solitude. Communal instincts, far older and more deeply ingrained in the human psyche than individualism, tend to get hidden in a hardcore individualistic culture like America’s. Many people, threatened from all sides, alone and afraid—are susceptible to sham tribalism—potential true believers for con artists who are out to exploit unmet psychic needs. The political huckster’s trick is to convince solitary individuals that they are all under the same essential threat, and must band together—behind the huckster—to remove the threat. Despite America’s veneration of the mythical rugged individualist, the individual is helpless against most of life’s cruelties; people need each other. Hope springs from awareness of our mutual needs. Still, Americans’ reverence for our fabled individualism has allowed our culture to be taken over by a loose clique of severely ill individuals who are so isolated they have lost any empathy, compassion, or kinship they might once have had.
These ruggedest of individualists (the actual rulers behind the politicians) trudge constantly to reinforce the myth that they alone have vision the rest of us lack—therefore only they can lead humanity out of darkness, poverty, and misery—if we follow them blindly. Constantly, skillfully, practicing doublethink, they claim no responsibility for providing us with better lives—still we must follow. While some plutocrats, past and present, actually did contribute to inventions or discoveries that enhanced mankind’s material progress, none of them accomplished these feats in a vacuum. Most of them were simply in the right place and time to take advantage of human progress, grabbing for themselves the credit and material rewards belonging to the human race. They (and descendants of people like them) are allowed to rule a world crawling with mechanisms and systems capable of wiping out the race, yet they are for the most part so caught up in their isolated worlds, they are incapable of detecting the clear and present danger to everyone, including themselves. The rest of us, while not quite as isolated as those in power, still struggle to survive on a planet crowded with strangers. Is there any wonder that some people seek companionship, even under self-destructive conditions?
Knowing the attractiveness of mob action, our culture’s ruling rugged individualists eagerly champion men and women who can coax lonely people into joining mobs to carry out their goals. Trump, whose total contempt for humanity is obvious, has convinced millions of solitary, confused individuals that he alone cares about them. He can manipulate their emotions; inflame, then soothe their psychic wounds; finally bring them together in an ecstasy of “us against them”—capturing for his own purposes the deep human instinct to belong. He brings together millions of exalting devotees, who heed the call to collectively commit atrocities against American society’s foundations. Since the philosophy behind the mob’s collective actions is secondary to being together, we who still support peace and freedom could possibly turn the madding crowd’s communal sensibilities toward more constructive causes or activities. After all, humanity does have a lot of work to do to repair the damages done by centuries of hyper-individualistic industrialization that has enriched a few, impoverished many, and poisoned the planet. But right now, MAGA crowds are so deeply under the influence of the huckster-in-chief that rational arguments are fruitless, though we still must present them, if only to keep up our spirits. Democracy, and our planet’s livability, depend on our not giving up the struggle.
Fanatical, self-destructive fascism threatened peace and freedom in the 1930’s and 1940’s; the same reckless zealotry threatens democracy in the twenty-first century. We who can still commit thoughtcrime must commit to working together in opposition to modern fascism, despite petty differences that can split us apart. Like many of us, I hoped that the 2020 election (as I also vainly hoped in 2008) might turn our country’s path toward more freedom, unity, and equality. Instead, disciples of the cult of personality denied the election’s results and reaffirmed their determination to vanquish us. The threat that many Americans are willing to lose everything in the fight to destroy their world—and ours—is real. We need to fight intelligently, but just as hard, to protect our world—and theirs.