(a side note appears at the end of the regular Post)
Payton Gendron’s murder of 10 human beings was a rational act, planned for months. He expected to die after killing as many black men and women as possible. He conducted surveillance, chose his target, prepared meticulously to strike and do as much damage as he could. He believed in the lie of the “Great Replacement”, that immigrants and black and brown people are preparing to usurp traditional white privileges of power and influence. * There is no indication that he is mentally ill, that he hallucinates, hears voices or believes himself to be an emissary of supernatural wishes. He was conducting a jihad against black people. He is a terrorist of the white supremacy faction.
As of this posting, he appears to have been radicalized online. That he is morally degenerate is beyond doubt, but that simply makes him one more member of an expanding body of Americans who are abandoning mercy and empathy for strangers and some facts pretty much altogether.*
How does mercy for strangers die?
One drop of poison at a time.
How do good people rope off their empathy from strangers – I’m describing ordinary people who love their children, practice charity, practice empathy within their circle of acquaintances.
One drop of poison at a time.
How do intelligent people come to believe in ideas and theories that are easily proven false, that are easily shown to be lies?
Because they have willfully chosen to believe in the poison that comes to them one drop at a time. They set aside their bullshit detectors. They believe because others like them believe.
How do these good people come to embrace cruelty and elect representatives who practice it on a national and international level as matters of explicit policy?
They embrace a twisted faith. They are able to do so, but they refuse to think beyond slogans. They call the poison the truth. They embrace their victimhood. They want to be released from constraints. They want salvation through the exclusion of others unlike them.
Maybe this is how it happens: Make up anger from a life of resentments. Somone must be to blame for one’s unhappiness. So … just conjure it out of the air, out of dust and noise and the slick nightly malignancy of Tucker Carlson and Fox and hundreds of other politicians and ranting commentators.
Tell those millions who happily, voluntarily, eagerly tune in that they are being replaced. Black and brown people are coming to dilute their vote, take away their guns, kill unborn babies, eat children in secret pedophile lairs.* Oh wait, tell them that all Democrats are going to do that too. Tell them Black and Brown people want handouts, want to move next to them, are inveterate criminals, belong to gangs, sell drugs, brainwash children. Oh wait, tell them only democrat teachers do that. They’re the enemy too.
Tell them that there are enemies everywhere, but yet they are pure. They are sanctified. They tune in. They are MAGA. The ‘others’ are libs, mud people, aliens, Muslims, baby-killers, n*****’s, pedos, kikes.
Covid is not the only killer disease. Fanaticism is worse. A choice to stop thinking for one’s self is worse.
Fanatics believe in nothing but themselves and in brutality, both chaotic and controlled. Their violence is sanctified, patriotic, always done in self-defense, and often done at arm’s length through decrees of the State and the actions (or inaction) of its agents.
We are being lifted into a whirlwind of madness and it feels as if worse is coming, as if we are in a more opaque version of 1937 when every direction one looked, one saw instability, fear fueling tyranny or a desire for it, political cynicism, violence.
An American Enterprise Survey taken in February of 2021 found that nearly three in 10 Americans, including 39% of Republicans, agreed that “if elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions.”* Remember, this survey was taken a month after the attempt by Trump and his allies and his mob to overthrow the government.
Along with all those politicians and media personalities who have embraced him and who echo his hatred, Trump is at it again, in the coliseums, at the fairgrounds, readying himself for a 2024 run, the one who better than anyone else knows how to orchestrate fear, note by note, who loves to hear the red voices of crowds in their heavy song sing in praise of his life, this the adulation of the faithful who are again gathering under lights where they watch others like themselves, where they can bathe in his words without listening. In the warmth of these believers, His is the sacramental presence. Better than anyone else, he can sing songs of resentment and revenge. He knows what they want. He can chant the thump-thump of batons. He can sharpen their fear. He knows what they want is this: Make the others burn and retch, no quarter, no refuge, no humans involved, no pity, no peace, no humans allowed.
*For a short list only, add France, the UK, Israel, Russia, Myanmar, China and … and … and ….
“The AEI survey found that white evangelicals were especially prone to subscribe to the Qanon movement’s conspiracy theories. Twenty-seven percent said it was “mostly” or “completely” accurate to say Trump “has been secretly fighting a group of child sex traffickers that include prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites.” NPR
A side note: The Democrats as a national Party are often hapless, feckless, too old (oh so old) arrogant and spineless but they believe in democracy, and most of the time, in human dignity and the rule of law. The Republican Party has been captured by Trump and MAGA (i.e. Desanctis is distilled MAGA). They believe in nothing except vengeance and power. They are a dangerous conglomeration of white evangelical Christian nationalists, militia types, good old-fashioned oligarchs, cynical DC Republican operatives, working class whites who believe themselves screwed (and who have been screwed but not by black or brown people or immigrants) and by preppy antisemites and pure hate ’em all racists. They are profoundly anti-democracy as evidenced by … well … if I have to spell it out for you, you missed January 6 and everything in the Red States that came thereafter. If Trump is elected again, I do not think we will survive as a democracy and perhaps not as a nation. Unleashed from any restraints, he will push to punish his enemies and his enemies are legion.
The unimaginable is never far from my mind. I’ve read enough 20th Century European and Russian history to understand how events and individuals come together to produce catastrophes thought to be unimaginable.
So … I think of the very worst and how it might happen here. I cannot imagine how the machines would be aligned, how the power supply would function, how all of it would be organized. Still, I think about it, and this sentence from Colin Jones’s book The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in Revolutionary Paris struck me hard. It comes from a speech made by a supporter of Robespierre and the Terror:
“Our domestic enemies could all be exterminated in one day so that we could all enjoy the happiness that the Republic promises us.”
As I said, I think of the very worst and how it might happen here.
