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Facism and Donald Trump
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
We have all heard a variation of that phrase since it was written by George Santayana in Life of Reason in 1905. There are several meanings and interpretations attached to it but the most enduring and popular one is that we need to learn from our mistakes. In fact, one interpretation says that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.
With Donald Trump being the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party, I thought it was important to revisit this concept because we've never had a Presidential candidate like him in my life. He has an outsized personality, he says what he believes regardless of who's offended by it, he denigrates entire groups of people, he encourages violent behavior by his supporters and he has never ran for or been elected to public office. Yet a majority of Republicans, through the ballot box, indicated a preference for him over all the others.
History tells us that the German people, immediately prior to World War II which Hitler started almost singlehandedly, were in a similar kind of mood. The Germans had always been a proud people but starting and then losing World War I had left them angry, upset, and embarrassed about their loss of stature in the world. They wanted someone to make them strong again and, as it turned out, Hitler filled that void. But they weren't an evil people. They weren't looking for a fight or hoping for a war; in fact the vast majority of the German people did not want another war. Hitler knew this and consequently never advocated war publicly, although the steps he took were certainly in that direction. His nationalist issues resonated with a segment of the population and he proposed a solution to almost every problem facing them.
He had a penchant for public speaking and was an expert at using propaganda to further his own goals and objectives. Because he had a compelling personality, the German people's respect for authority and his personal charisma caused them to abandon their moral responsibility. We've always known that a group of people will do and say things that individuals within the group would never do and there were many groups like that in pre-World-War-II Germany. Hitler's message of national renewal was first embraced by the lesser educated and the more conservative and spread to a consensus as Hitler gained power and control.
We know this is possible anywhere and by anybody. As long as there is a leader who tells us what to do authoritatively, we do it because his narrative has absolved us of any personal responsibility. When Trump says to his rabid, emotionally charged audience to send protestors out on a stretcher, that gives his followers the moral authority to do just that. Trump wants to make America great again, as did Hitler with Germany. Hitler isolated and alienated certain groups of people (the Jews) as Trump is doing today (the Muslims and illegal immigrants), and regardless of the problems that exist in America, Trump is going to fix them, just like Hitler promised to do.
The latest bombshell from the Trump side came just the other day when Trump's former butler, Anthony Senecal, posted on Facebook that President Obama should have been shot and killed as an enemy agent. Trump has distanced himself from that comment but the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
So we have a billionaire running for President who's never been elected to anything and he got majority support from Republicans because he told them at every rally what they wanted to hear.
I understand the frustration of white, working-class Americans. They feel like they've been shunned and overlooked by a power elite who's doing everything they can to protect the minorities of this country and nothing to aid the people who made America great to begin with. This is what Trump's telling them and they're buying it hook, line and sinker; in part, because like any great dramatic story, there's some truth to it.
But there's a lot of things to Trump that don't make sense and several things that are downright scary when you compare him historically with other charismatic individuals who believed they had the golden key to change the world.
They didn't and Trump most likely doesn't either!