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I have long believed that the GOP was not acting in the best interest of the majority of Americans, and I’ve secretly feared that its followers possessed the capacity to lean more toward fascist tendencies given the right conditions. But I never imagined a move to the right the scope and intensity of which we are witnessing today. The GOP, under trump, has become an extremist organization!

I don’t say this lightly.  “Extremism,” as my revered philosophy professor in college was fond of reminding us, “is fanaticism!” Doesn’t matter whether it’s left or right; it’s fanatical. And he knew what he was talking about, having fought in the Greek underground against Nazi Germany in WWII.

Fanaticism, according to www.vocabulary.com, “occurs when someone is unwilling or unable to accept a differing point of view.” Talk to any trump supporters lately? Wikipedia describes fanaticism as “a belief or behavior involving uncritical zeal or with an obsessive enthusiasm.” How about that trump rally yesterday in Pennsylvania? He sure knows how to fire them up! Urbandictionary.com tells us fanaticism is driven by hunger for power and “the strong desire to be considered right.” Sound familiar?

It’s helpful to remember that fanaticism can be found on either side of the political spectrum. George F. Will reminds us in today’s Washington Post that “trump, bellowing ‘fake news’ and ‘sham’ this and ‘rigged’ that, is on all fours with his leftist, often academic and equally fact-free despisers who, hollering ‘racist’ and ‘fascist,’ are his collaborators in the attack on the constitution of knowledge.”

So, what’s the difference between an academic shouting “fascist” and me describing the GOP as “fanatical?”  There are 2 differences, as I see them: One is in the delivery.  Shouting something requires no analysis or reflection upon that which is shouted, it only requires enthusiasm and adrenaline. Describing something is a more cerebral enterprise.

The other difference has to do with intent. Calling something or someone a name is an act of labeling something, comparing it to other things with which it shares like traits. It doesn’t require much thought, knowledge of or familiarity with a thing to make such loose associations about it. Such intellectual laziness is rife in today’s political and public discourse.

On the other hand, describing a thing, an organization, etc., based upon perceived qualities and characteristics is a thoughtful undertaking that requires analysis and reflection. It involves the careful selection of terms that accurately describe and define the subject under analysis. It is a more measured response.

So while I stand by my assertion that the GOP today has become an extremist and therefore fanatical organization, what of the man at the top and his incessant lying? Jonathan Rauch, of the Brookings Institution, cited by George F. Will in the above-referenced article, says that trump’s “presidential lying . . reflects a strategy, not merely a character flaw or pathology.” Will adds, “the way to combat trump’s attack on Americans’ ‘collective ability to distinguish truth from falsehood’ is by attending to the various social mechanisms that, taken together, are the ‘method of validating propositions.”

Will, again borrowing from Rauch, continues, “modernity began when humanity ‘removed reality-making from the authoritarian control of priests and princes’ and outsourced it to no one in particular. It was given over to a ‘decentralized, globe-spanning community of critical testers who hunt for each other’s errors.’ This is why today’s foremost enemy of modernity is populism, which cannot abide the idea that majorities are not self-validating.”

The current occupant of the White House owes his ascendance to the kind of raw and rough-edged populism one sees on display at his political rallies. Not only does he thrive on the attention he receives at these spectacles, he depends on it to buttress his fragile ego. His followers find comfort from their fears and insecurities at these events through their participation in and identification with something they perceive as bigger than themselves, something that gives them a sense of belonging and a validation that someone else is the problem and der orangenfarben fuhrer is the solution. The unquestioning acceptance by his followers of whatever comes out of trump’s mouth, their conviction of the verity of their assumptions and their disinterest in thinking beyond the narrow confines of their beliefs coupled with their undiminished zeal, taken together, comprise  the sum and substance, the very essence,  of the definition of fanaticism.

October 11, 2018

Petaluma, CA