Approximately one hour after the suspected mail bomber was captured, an anonymous man phoned my home, someone who apparently knows I am a professor, spouting, “Hey, how can I donate to your university, you Jew Kike.”
And the Brown Shirts are marching in lockstep!
No, Donald Trump did not send pipe bombs to a dozen people he most harshly verbally attacks. No, Donald Trump did not tell the alleged perpetrator to send those pipe bombs in the mail. No, Donald Trump did not create the current social, religious, and political climate of incivility and hate.
As the Bully-In-Chief who serves in the most powerful position in the country and arguably on the planet, though, Donald Trump has amplified the temperature to unprecedented dangerous levels with his bullhorn of division, name-calling, character assassination, and narcissistic self-centeredness.
Donald Trump supports terrorism, whether in Charlottesville, Virginia with neo-Nazi white supremacists, through his overriding concern for money over the killing of a Washington Post columnist by his authoritarian Saudi friends, or in his reluctant and half-hearted reading of remarks prepared by his staff on the search for and capture of the alleged package bomb maker.
In the early morning hours just before the arrest, Trump’s Tweet demonstrated that he considered the mail bombs (this “Bomb” stuff) merely as an intrusive inconvenience to himself during the closing hours of a tight midterm election.
Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this “Bomb” stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows – news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote! — Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 10:19 AM – Oct 26, 2018
Even more troubling than Donald Trump’s words, behavior, and how he has debased the office of the presidency, however, is the fervent, mindless, and unconditional support from his base supporters.
During the late 1940s, researchers, led by Theodor W. Adorno, studied the historical conditions that paved the way for the rise of fascist regimes in the 1920s and 1930s, World War II, and the Holocaust. They theorized about individuals who would support the growth of fascism.
They suggested that people of a certain personality type, which they labeled the “authoritarian personality,” were most ripe for extremism, in this case, those most susceptible to anti-Jewish prejudice and anti-democratic political beliefs.
They relinquished their autonomy and critical thinking facilities for the prospect of going back to a future reminiscent of a (mythic) idealistic past of economic, political, social, cultural, and personal security, where their “ingroup” won and led, and those “outgroups” served obediently and acquiesced to “ingroup” needs and demands.
They pledged obedience and allegiance to a powerful leader or social institution. In other words, they surrendered their freedom for the promise of social and personal security, which usually includes the suppression of those outside the circle, the “others.”
Then entered the mighty strongman, Donald J. Trump.
He painted a gruesome image of a post-apocalyptic United States, replete with vicious marauding gangs, gunshots whizzing throughout the inner cities, decrepit crumbling structures and highways, rampant poverty, declining socialist-inspired health care systems, imminent terrorist attacks, ruthless criminal drug-dealing rapist invaders from our southern border.
He continues to incite hatred and violence at his rallies, and fear, stereotyping and scapegoating all Muslims and so-called “illegal aliens,” promises to punish women who have had and their doctors who have performed abortions, argues that he will continue to restructure the Supreme Court to an ultra-conservative majority, which will, thereby, reverse both Roe v. Wade and marriage equality.
And he perennially pledges to “Make America Great Again.”
Heir das Donald non-so-solemnly proclaimed during his acceptance wandering diatribe at the Republican National Convention:
I am your voice! I alone can fix it. I will restore law and order.
Trump never asked anything of his supporters other than their full loyalty by placing their total faith in him. And the authoritarian personalities followed brown-shirted in lock-step.
Trump promotes his followers to wax nostalgic to the television shows from many of their youth: “Father Knows Best,” “The Donna Reed Show,” “Ozzy and Harriet,” and “Leave it to Beaver,” all reflecting the mainstream popular image of the U.S.-American family as white, middle class, with a nice home in the suburbs, and with all family members accepting their assigned raced and gendered scripts.
Democracy, though, demands an educated electorate. Democracy demands responsibility on the part of the electorate to critically examine their politicians and to make truly informed decisions. Democracy demands of us all never to relinquish our freedom and authority for some promise of a comfortable security by returning to a fairy tale past.
When we relinquish our freedom for security, this gives rise to: “I don’t have to think. I’m a Trump supporter.”
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