It Can Happen Here

by

Gadfly

           A close friend sent to me a book review by Cass Sunstein, published in The New York Times.  The title of the review was, “It Can Happen Here.”  The implication of the article is that President Trump is like Hitler in his authoritarian tendencies.

Sunstein’s review includes books by other authors from a personal, “lived experience” perspective.  In my opinion (based on years of research), whether deliberate or accidental, presentations such as Sunstein's distract from a more sinister development in America.  He writes well and his arguments are compelling in an ideographic sense—that is, plausible analysis of a phenomenon within a very narrow scope.  In this case, the scope is a set of memoirs of ordinary people who lived during the rise and reign of Hitler.  These arguments become incidental, merely anecdotal, and diminished from a nomothetic perspective—that is, an understanding of a phenomenon within a much broader context.  In the more comprehensive nomothetic case, it is important to understand the conditions that enabled Hitler’s rise to power.

Simply put, the conditions that enabled the Hitler phenomenon were quite apparent.  First, Germany was a democracy.  Democracies allow for the manifestation of mob behavior and natural transition to socialism (and eventually the more extreme fascist form of national socialism).  Second, the signatory nations of the Versailles Treaty isolated, alienated, and shamed the German population.  Third, economic conditions agitated the population.  The population was ready for hope and change, and Hitler promised it.  He rose to power democratically.  Hitler and the German population sought reparations—that is, payback.  In other words, German lives mattered.  The Nazis and the SS were a minority of the overall population, they controlled the public narrative and the political agenda, not unlike what we see playing out in America.  A major difference of note:  Germany and Poland have not torn down residual physical remains of concentration camps.  To the contrary, they keep them to remember important lessons from history.

  

My friend is a decent and honorable man, and certainly not an outlier in the population of concerned Americans.  I have read many opinion pieces with similar implications advanced by Sunstein, even a booklet by Yale historian Timothy Snyder:  On Tyranny:  Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.  These authors seek evidence to support their belief that Trump is an authoritarian.  Yet, the evidence is normative in that what they present are unwarranted assertions about what they want to believe.  For example, in Sunstein’s review, he states:

If the president of the United States is constantly lying, complaining that the independent press is responsible for fake news, calling for the withdrawal of licenses from television networks, publicly demanding jail sentences for political opponents, undermining the authority of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, magnifying social divisions, delegitimizing critics as “crooked” or “failing,” and even refusing, in violation of the law, to protect young children against the risks associated with lead paint—well, it’s not fascism, but the United States has not seen anything like it before.

           Let us unpack this statement.

 

Constantly lying.  The left has been constant in their accusation that President Trump lies.  Sunstein provides no examples.  No need to.  If the left says it enough, it becomes true (Germany’s Goebbels was fully aware of this maxim).

 

There is no doubt that Trump exaggerates and says bold things, but this does not rise to the level of lies.  Trump may truly believe the things he says, even if they turn out not to be true.  We often hear politicians say, “I misspoke,” even when they lie.

 

Did President Obama lie when he repeatedly told the public, “you can keep your doctor” or that families would save $2,500 a year in health care premiums?  Now we know from Jonathon Gruber and Ben Rhodes that the Obama Administration deliberately lied to advance its agenda—in particular, Obamacare and the Iran Nuclear Deal, respectively.

    

Independent press is responsible for fake news.  Does any reasonable person believe the press is independent?  The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest man in the world and a leftist progressive.  The New York Times fired an editor for allowing Senator Cotton’s op-ed to be published.  Except for Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and a handful of radio programs and other digital news sources, the mainstream media is leftist, progressive, and anti-Trump.  ABC’s Nightly News with David Muir has yet to cover any of the news related to exculpatory evidence in the Lieutenant General Michael Flynn case or the dozens of Congressman Schiff’s committee transcripts finally made public.

Calling for the withdrawal of licenses from television networks.  This was mere frustrated rhetoric.  No licenses were withdrawn.  Yet, under the Obama Administration, there was an attempt to place government monitors in news rooms.  This would have put a real damper on an independent press.

        

Publicly demanding jail sentences for political opponents.  This is true.  One individual who was singled out was Hillary Clinton.  The “exoneration” effort by FBI Director Comey was a gross violation of our legal system.  Comey not only delineated federal crimes committed, he circumvented the normal process for prosecuting them.  As Comey, Clinton, and others like to repeat, “no one is above the law,” unless you are a member of the political left.  How many prosecutions of criminals who happen to be political opponents have taken place under the Trump Administration?  Zero . . . so far.  Meanwhile, Obama holdovers have viciously prosecuted Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and several others who happened to be political operatives with the Trump campaign.

The Obama Administration put journalists under surveillance and censored conservative groups using the IRS.  The Obama Administration spied on the Trump campaign and orchestrated a silent coup through the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane operation, transitioned to the Mueller investigation, and then an impeachment.

    

Undermining the authority of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).  It was the senior leaders of the DOJ and FBI that undermined President Trump’s authority. DOJ’s Yates issued a directive to DOJ officials not to enforce one of President Trump’s Executive Orders (a federal judge later placed an injunction on the Order and the Supreme Court ruled the Order constitutional); Rosenstein appointed Mueller as the Special Prosecutor and illegally authorized FISA warrants; and Ohr violated department protocols in advancing the fallacious Steele Dossier.  They were not loyal to the Office of the President; more accurately, they were seditious.  The FBI’s Comey, McCabe, Baker, Strzok, Page, and others were actively involved in illegally delegitimizing President Trump, but worse, targeting Trump’s political circle for manipulated prosecutions.  Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and other socialist leaders knew how to silence political opposition.  Yes, it can happen here—it already has.

Magnifying social divisions. Calling people racist, misogynist, xenophobic, homophobic, and so forth does not make them so.  It is the left that magnifies and celebrates social division with its emphasis on diversity, multiculturalism, and social justice.

Delegitimizing critics as “crooked” or “failing.”  If anyone is criticized based on false or fabricated information, then what is an appropriate response?  After millions of taxpayer funding spent over two years of the Mueller investigation and the extraordinary partisan impeachment fiasco, it is understandable that President Trump would consider these efforts to be crooked and failures.

Even refusing, in violation of the law, to protect young children against the risks associated with lead paint.  This allegation was good for generating political capital for the left’s agenda.  However, the same news sources advancing this narrative have not reported Trump Administration efforts to the contrary.

Sunstein and his like-minded cohort may not realize that they are members of America's intelligentsia.  The word “intelligentsia” originated in Russia about the time of the Bolshevik Revolution.  It describes an educated group that feels superior in its theories about progress and an imagined future utopia.  Their intentions are noble within the context of their self-proclaimed moral superiority.  They represent an echo chamber that is socially and politically isolated from the general population they seek to control.

    

           Ironically, the title of Sunstein’s article was inspired by Sinclair Lewis’s novel, It Can’t Happen Here.

 

Lewis’s wife was a journalist who followed Hitler’s rise to power in Germany.  So, Lewis wrote about the possibility taking place in America.  The lead character was modeled after Louisiana Governor Huey Long, a democrat, who wanted to defeat Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential primary.  Long did not think FDR’s policies were left (socialist) enough.  Here is a sample of Long’s Share the Wealth movement and political agenda.  Sound familiar?

The left complains that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.  This would have sufficed in a democracy.  America is still a republic (founded as such because America’s Founders feared the extreme manifestations of democracy)—unless and until sufficiently destroyed by the left’s current deliberate and well-funded mobocracy.  That is why the Electoral College still determines the winner, to prevent large, government-centric metropolitan areas from dominating rural areas.

 

The fact that Trump advances a political agenda that is contrary to the left’s is a matter of values (i.e., personal liberty and responsibility, self-governance through a Constitutional Republic, truth and justice, religious freedom, freedom of speech, equal protection and due process, etc.) reflected by the political faction that supported his election.  Trump believes in personal responsibility and a government that protects individual rights, not a government that compels individuals to assimilate into a collective group (e.g., political identity groups) subsidized by the government.

 

In 2016, the Trump and Clinton campaign slogans said a lot: “Make America Great Again” (for all Americans) versus “I’m with Her” (appealing to one political faction).  This Trump campaign video (you will not find this on YouTube; and Facebook and Twitter will not allow it to be “shared”) was candid about the political landscape and his intent to preserve America’s republic.  One of his important arguments was about corporatism and the unholy alliance between large corporations and the media—one of the central features of fascism in Germany and Italy).  Clinton’s slogan and comprehensive litany of policy proposals spoke to an authoritarian perspective.

 

Trump’s message appeals to hard working, law abiding citizens.  The left’s message appeals to the power elite and those looking for government-provided (taxpayer funded) free lunches.

 

While Trump’s approach and language may be out of the ordinary, they are an attempt to restore republican statesmanship to an environment infested by democratically-corrupt politicians, from the deceitful to the feckless.  With eyes wide open, Trump does not bring an olive branch to a knife fight.  As Teddy Roosevelt understood in his day, Trump has fully embraced his duty as the man in the arena:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Acculturation without Context

by

Gadfly

Today’s essay is inspired by a short eBook, The #1 Mistake Most Everyone Makes When Reading the Bible, recommended to me by a close friend and mentor.  That mistake is interpreting passages without the proper context for the passage.  This common practice can also explain how acculturation without context substitutes for a system of education in modern America.  As a consequence, we now have at least three generations of Copernican drones.

 

My very first blog article, “Cogito Ergo Sum (‘I Think, Therefore I Am,’ Descartes),” published on August 9, 2012, introduced the notion of a Copernican drone.  Here is an excerpt from the article:

I realize that many potential readers may be incapable of comprehending the reflection and analysis in these blog entries.  Most of these people are what I call Copernican drones, and some are the product of a public-school educational system that spends more time prescribing what to think instead of how to think.   These Copernican drones lack the functional capacity to pollinate the world with enduring ideas based on their own creative thinking or critical analysis.  Nicolaus Copernicus only published one book in his lifetime—On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres--and it sparked a scientific revolution.  In the introduction to his book, there is a discussion about Copernicus’s reluctance to officially publish his analysis and theory of the solar system.  He knew that it would receive harsh criticism--not from the few who would take the time to digest his work first hand, but from the “drones among bees” who claim to be experts but only repeat what other drones such as themselves have written in newspapers and magazines (in other words, sound bites such as those we hear on the nightly news, or read in newspapers or magazines like the modern era’s Newsweek). 

Unfortunately, today’s Copernican drones are quick to say, “let’s agree to disagree,” either (a) imitating what they have heard from others in similar discussions; or (b) preventing a disruption to their comfort zone.  In their minds, a different view is not simply different but wrong.  Moreover, to a progressive, such as George Lakoff (demonstrated in his book, Moral Politics:  How Liberals and Conservative Think), a different view is not only wrong it is immoral.

   

The Copernican drone effect can be subtle.  For example, we recently watched various news sources on celebrations of the 75^th Anniversary of D-Day.   For some of the sources, the focus was on the incongruity of our current “unfit” President and how out of place he seemed during his European appearances.  Yet, an examination of the most important “optics” would reveal that, at the multiple American cemeteries enshrining hundreds of thousands of American service members buried across the European landscape, their resting places were marked by a Christian Cross or Star of David.  This context should remind us that the devotion and courage of Americans who fought against the tyranny of fascism reflected character firmly rooted in a Judeo-Christian tradition.  I do not recall any recognition of this context from any of the news sources.

How is it that such context can be missed in relation to such an epic time in our history?  The answer is acculturation.  Acculturation is how political elite shape and condition those they wish to rule.  Aldous Huxley prophesied a conditioned society in A Brave New World.  C.S. Lewis cautioned us in his book The Abolition of Man.  George Orwell understood the danger of acculturation and warned us in Nineteen Eighty-Four.  Neil Postman provided evidence in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death:  Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.  Bella Dodd wrote about her experiences as an American communist conditioner in her memoir, School of Darkness.  Dodd credits Archbishop Fulton Sheen for her rescue.  In a radio broadcast on January 26, 1947, Sheen said:

Why is it that so few realize the seriousness of our present crisis?  Partly because men do not want to believe their own times are wicked, partly because it involves too much self-accusation, and principally because they have no standards outside of themselves by which to measure their times . . . Only those who live by faith really know what is happening in the world.  The great masses without faith are unconscious of the destructive processes going on (cited in an article by Joseph Pronechen, “Did Fulton Sheen Prophesy About These Times?”) .

Acculturation is critical to progressivism.  In this case “progress” is a verb, not a noun.  It involves social justice and other tactics to promote equality, even coercively, in an imagined perfect future—a future created by political elite.  Its idea of the American dream is a future created for others by those who are superior intellectually and morally.  These elite follow in the footsteps of Eve in the Book of Genesis when she defied God by eating fruit from the forbidden tree.  She was deceived by the devil in thinking she could be God’s equal.  The fate of progressivism, as in all former attempts at socialism, is to arrive at a single commandment, as the animals in Orwell’s Animal Farm discovered: “All animals are created equal; some are more equal than others.”  Is it, then, any surprise that some 2020 Presidential contenders extol the merits of socialism while also virtue-signaling about reparations?

Individuality is a threat to progressivism’s acculturated collective system.  This is why equality is more important than liberty.  This is why morality is determined by political elite as opposed to a natural law that is superior to the man-made State.

 

Acculturation without context depends on the imposition of values by political elite.  Tilling the soil of the human mind and heart to be receptive to these imposed values requires the removal of any traditional values that are not congruent with the progressive perfect future.  Hayek made this observation in his book, Fatal Conceit:  The Errors of Socialism:

Man is not born wise, rational, and good, but has to be taught to become so.  It is not our intellect that created our morals; rather, human interactions governed by our morals make possible the growth of reason and those capabilities associated with it.  Man became intelligent because there was tradition—that which lies between instinct and reason—for him to learn.  This tradition, in turn, originated not from a capacity rationally to interpret observed facts but from habits of responding (pp. 21-22). 

Lee Harris of the Hoover Institute (and gay) wrote an intriguing article, “The Future of Tradition,” which essentially challenges the rationale for same-sex marriage.  By imposing this nontraditional norm on the majority, political elite have artificially changed tradition, even if it is disruptive to the natural order and stability of a civilized society.  Harris also wrote a compelling article about the roots of anti-Americanism—no surprise in that it has its basis in Marxism.

 

In my opinion, Marxism is the dominant ideology driving modern acculturation in America.  Most Americans are completely unaware.  Many of those who actively affiliate with socialism, such as the Communist Party USA (www.cpusa.org), have little to no understanding of socialism’s history and its brutality—they lack context, and they are Copernican drones.

 

Acculturation is the antithesis of education.  The Latin root for education is the verb “educare,” which means “to draw out.”  To educate or draw out, then, means that an educator (i.e., parent, teacher, minister, coach, etc.) facilitates the cognitive and emotional maturation of an individual, enabling the individual to see and understand and then to explain and to anticipate.

 

Education enables an individual to learn to interact with others and to understand how one’s behavior affects others and vice versa.  Over time these interactions become norms and customs, such as manners.  Manners are what we traditionally understood as habits for constructive interactions with others.

 

Education develops an individual capacity to observe and then to process information for sense making.  This is why two individuals can observe the same thing and have different perspectives about it.  This is good.  It represents the diversity that allows these two individuals to respectfully explore the differences in their perspectives.  Hegel called this dialectical reasoning, which enables closer approximations of the truth, the ultimate objective.  The process requires active dialogue.

 

Thomas Kuhn, in his seminal book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, explains the challenge in advancing science (essentially the journey “to know”) is the pesky paradigm—the mental frame for observing and processing information.  According to Kuhn, “When paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular.  Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm’s defense” (p. 94).  It is possible, through respect and active listening, to be unbounded by paradigms.  This can happen by treating the other person with respect and dignity.  Agreeing to disagree is a retreat from science.

How bad is acculturation without context in America?  On Tuesday, riding Denver’s light rail to Coors Stadium for a Rockies game, a 1970 graduate from West Point and retired medical doctor, sitting across from me, made an interesting comment: “I have not personally read the Mueller Report, but I am damn glad the House is conducting hearings to find out what happened in the Trump Russia Scandal.”

 

Really?

 

Mustering as much politeness as I could at the spur of the moment, I responded, “I have read the report.  Mueller’s logic on obstruction was convoluted and, in my opinion, deliberately crafted in a way to give Democrats an opportunity to prosecute the President in the court of public opinion.  A complicit media provides powerful amplification for this purpose.”  (Note:  according to the latest polls, 50% of Americans believe Trump coordinated with Russia—even after the Mueller report found insufficient evidence for this finding).

 

In the privacy of my mind, I thought, “Here we are casually cruising on public transportation on our way to America’s great pastime, complete with hot dogs and beer, while other Americans are working feverishly to remove a duly elected President.”  This spontaneous encounter was a clear example of a comfort zone and effective acculturation without context.

Germany was an intellectual and cultural center of the world until Hitler gained power with the consent of the people.  In It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis wrote about how fascism emerges in America.  The left loves to suggest that Trump is the main character in It Can’t Happen Here.  After all, he lies.  He’s a dictator.  He’s imperialistic.  Yet, ask for a single example and you hear crickets.

 

Fascism (or communism) can happen in America.  It happens through acculturation without context.

 

Bishop Sheen was prescient in asking, “Why is it that so few realize the seriousness of our present crisis?”  The crisis is not Trump.  Trump is merely the visible symbol of values contrary to the acculturated left.  Unfortunately, the acculturated left controls the public narrative.  The public narrative controls public sentiment.  Public sentiment controls decisions at the ballot box.