Unleashing the Monster

Maybe we all need to pay closer attention to things. Oh, and maybe we need to calm down in the process. Donald Trump is playing us all “like a rusty squeezebox.” I say “us,” and I mean it, but the press in particular is falling for his ploy like kids chasing the Pied Piper. Myself, I don’t think he is saying these dreadfully bizarre things because he is dumb or crazy, be those as they may. I think he is saying them simply to make us angry, angry enough to hate whomever. It’s an old pro-wrestling trick, and we’re falling for it.

Angry people are malleable people. Ask the Germans. Ask the Rwandans. Ask the James Jonesians. Ask the Branch Davidians. Anger is a passion, not a calculated conclusion.

If Donald Trump can generate the passion, i.e. the anger, the Fox show, the meme generators, social media, and the Russian trolls can produce the objects for that passion. Leading up to the 2016 election, it was Hillary Clinton, the Obama Family, Nancy Pelosi, and the Democratic National Committee. You remember it. That’s the group that had the unmitigated audacity to prefer a member of the Democratic Party as its presidential nominee. That highly publicized predilection and the directed anger it produced convinced a group to sit out the normal processes of a free democracy. The results of that non-participation are apparent now, if we take the time to look beyond the daily news cycle.

It’s happening all over again. Work folks into a rabid frenzy and they’ll go anywhere you want them to. Targets change. Passions don’t. Prior to both World War One and World War Two, many parents were angry, and the object of that anger was the idea of their young sons being sent to die in a European War that seemed to them simply to be the latest production of a never-ending play. Young men directed their anger toward the draft and a military that would interrupt their jobs and dating schedules. Young women were angry that their lives would change for the worse.

It only took persuasive, but manipulative, politicians, a willing press, and (in the case of WW II) a few Frank Capra films to redirect that anger toward Germany. Then, due to an unmitigated act of stupidity (one that included one sovereign nation’s attacking another sovereign nation that had never done it harm, hmmm), that re-directed anger gained a dreadful and terrifying legitimacy. Justified? Of course it was, but justification doesn’t produce action. Ask our African-American brothers and sisters.

So, my fellow Americans. We don’t need to be angry. We need to be afraid. Very afraid. And we need to be aware, very aware. Most of all, we need to be resolved. Very resolved.