Donald Trump’s Sincerity
former U.S. president, Donald Trump (via Wikipedia)
Donald Trump’s
Sincerity
Today’s post is a stretch,
I admit, but it presents a modest, but real, claim.
I wanted to point out
today something about events in 1945 and then relate those events to events in
present times.
I will start by
summing up some things about Adolph Hitler’s final days and hours. Hitler
started his whole campaign to become dictator of Germany, and then to expand
Germany’s “living space” (“lebensraum”, in German), by basing his plans on his
vision of how history works. He believed he had discovered that history only
moves forward by warfare. Struggle between nations. He claimed, for example,
that “mankind has grown strong through eternal struggles, and it will only
perish through eternal peace.” And he sincerely believed that his model of how
history worked was as correct and exactly accurate as was Darwin’s Theory of
Evolution about Biology. “Races” (his term) must struggle and
fight or they do not survive. In fact, any tribe that is reluctant to fight wars,
or that loses a war, deserves to die out.
As I have said before in
this space, Hitler’s theories about “races” of humankind are nonsensical to
real students of Genetics. Humans are all members of one species. The amount we
humans differ genetically from so-called “race” to “race” is less than 1/10 of
1% of our total genetic code. There is no “Aryan” race. In fact, in the real
science of Genetics, there are no “races” at all. Not from Europe to Africa to
the Far East to the Americas before Europeans came to the New World. Some
people in all those places may have talked as if the term “race” made sense,
but it simply doesn’t. The term, for modern science, is empty.
Why does this matter?
Because in his final days and hours in a concrete-hardened bunker in Berlin,
Hitler kept raving about a rescue army that was going to save Berlin, himself,
and the Reich from the Russian troops that were closing in. There
was no such army. Then, at the very last, he raved that the Germans should go
down in a sea of blood and fire because that was what they deserved. They had
lost this colossal struggle to another “race”, which, in his eyes, was the
Russians – who, by the way, really were mainly responsible for the breaking of
the power of the German war machine. (Look up the casualty stats.) In the
laboratory of history, Hitler believed, the Germans had proved weaker than the
Russians, and, thus, the Germans deserved to die out. He even wanted Albert
Speer, his most essential minister of War, the economy, etc. to order German
troops still fighting in parts of Germany to destroy infra-structure like
bridges, electricity grids, water purification plants, and so on. Go down in a
sea of blood. Like the heroes in his favorite operas by Wagner. At least the
Germans would go out in a blaze of glory. This, by the way, Speer did not do.
Much of Germany’s infrastructure was destroyed, by the invading Allies and by
some German units, but at least some was saved. The important thing to see is that
Speer could imagine a world in which a defeated Germany was prostrate before
its enemies and somehow survived. Hitler couldn’t.
I have to grudgingly
respect Hitler’s sincerity. At least on the surface, he stuck by his original
vision of history and how it works. He found out that Speer had not issued the
orders that he had told Speer to issue, and he did not punish Speer. He just
shut up about the matter in his final hours. He apparently chose to let Speer
off for disobeying direct orders. But he never took back his words – maintained
in public and in private for nearly two decades by this point – about his model
of history and what the German people deserved. In short, he had a kind of
grotesque sincerity.
Why this matters today is
that I don’t think a lot of people in the world, and especially in the US right
now, get that in his warped way, Donald Trump is sincere. I think he really
believes that somehow, by some trick those dirty Democrats pulled – a trick that
has proved too subtle for his people to detect – the election really was stolen
from him. There must – must – must be a fraud in there somewhere. He could not
possibly lose that election to the man that he, for a long time called, “Slow
Joe”. Trump, in his own eyes, is so much handsomer and so much more charismatic
and savvy about the “art of the deal” that there must be a trick in there
somewhere. Or so he believes. He couldn’t really l – l – l - lose. How he
loathes that word! So much so that in his universe it can’t ever really be
applied to him. So much so that, in his view, losing that election is an
impossibility under the laws by which -- he believes -- the world functions.
He’s wrong, of course.
The results were checked and checked, again and again. Tested in several
different courts. In addition, it is worth pointing out that a conspiracy of
multiple traitors who could manage to gather/create the so-called “fraudulent”
results would be impossible to sustain. Any such conspiracy would have to
involve thousands and thousands of conspirators – so many in on the scam – election
officials in multiple states, judges, etc., many of whom he appointed. In a
conspiracy that large and complicated, someone would blab, probably within a
few hours, or at most a few days. No documents support his election fraud
theory either. No witnesses in any position to make such a call have ever said
the words he so desperately longs to hear. No documents support his version of
events, and they have been painstakingly searched for.
Like Hitler in his final
days, Trump was, and is, delusional. A solid majority of the American people
don’t want him for their president anymore.
Still, in the face of
overwhelming evidence and testimony, he will not admit that he lost. He admits
that Biden is now president, but secretly, Trump believes, the election is a
fraud. He will not put the word “loser” anywhere near to his name in speech or
print. Why such obstinacy? He holds onto this view, not in a superficial
pretense, but because he really believes it.
His losing as clearly as
he did also tells us something very hopeful. Maybe, just maybe, with a free and
responsible press and an engaged electorate, decency and sense really can win
in a democracy. Maybe, like Hitler, Trump lost because he is just wrong. His
way of seeing reality doesn’t match the way reality is. Maybe, democracy’s endless wrangling,
in the end, is right. It does sort the con artists out from the sincere
candidates, the neurotic out from the stable. In short, maybe DT lost the election because the majority saw him for what he
is.
I believe that history
does move under an extremely subtle set of laws, but that set of laws, over the
long term, favors freedom and pluralism. Democracy. It really is stronger,
in the end, than bigoted totalitarianism and belligerent tribalism. It just
takes a while for the laws of history to prove themselves.
What Trump will try in
the coming months remains to be seen; some of the possibilities are scary, I
admit. Hitler took several elections to come to power in Germany. And it was
only after a failed coup attempt that he decided to go the democratic route to
power, for the time being, until he really could, as duly elected chancellor,
get full control over the armed forces, the courts, the police, the writing of
the country’s laws, and so on. Then he began to move forward with his terrible
agenda. But I don't see that level of ambition or cynicism in Trump yet. During his time in office, he didn't try to take over the military or the economy.
And in the end, Hitler
did lose. My prediction, my hope, is that Trump has lost a lot of his power
base, and with many of his former underlings now running for cover after his
desperate attempt to use his supporters to overthrow the constitution of the US,
his popularity is going to continue to shrink. If those things do come to pass, this will be evidence showing that decency and sense really can win out -- on the big scale of
nations and the long haul of generations -- over cynicism and egotism.
There is still hope for our
species.
In the shadow of the
mushroom cloud, have a hopeful day.
U.S. president, Joe Biden (credit: Wikipedia)
