To the editor:
For now, I am free to write what I wish, though I have a fear, how imagined that fear is I’m currently debating, that those freedoms could soon be infringed upon, if not by letter of law than intimidation of the monomaniacal. My last letter inspired a few readers to reach out to me to intimidate, to spar, to … share their feelings? While their intentions weren’t clear, it seems true to me that for many, to support Trump has more in common with religious zealotry than any thoughtful political alliance. Amongst Trump’s followers, I witness a mindless heeding to his word, as if it’s His Word, and any opposition is considered blaspheme, rather than normal political discourse.
Until recently, my worldview relegated such cults of personality to Jonestown or Rancho Sante Fe, California, though now I can see the White House as fertile ground as well. And like those cultist movements, which lead to the deaths of 918 and 39 individuals, respectively, a similar lemming-eque fanaticism has mesmerized much of the electorate.
Right before my eyes, I’ve witnessed a sort of chemical change in folks. From one day to the next, those once skeptical of government, have now all the sudden made the switch to a wholesale adoption of virtually every executive action made by the man (our president is still a man, is he not? Of fallible flesh and blood?). Though I’ve tried, I can’t quite grasp the obsession with him, one which seems to induce a hypnotic state, a Stockholm syndrome-like limerence, perhaps?
What’s so unsettling, is that Trump doesn’t subscribe to any political ideology. Outside of what feeds his ego, as flimsy as the coif that floats above his head, he can’t be said to be guided by any virtue or actual belief system. One might think Trump’s lack of guiding principles might be a turn off for would-be voters, but instead it seems to have been a selling point. Those that feel disenfranchised (threatened?) by liberalism’s attempt to extend access to The American Dream to marginalized groups, have been given carte blanche to masquerade their thinly veiled -isms in “America First,” “MAGA,” and a robust enthusiasm for meritocracy.
For many Americans, these feel like deeply troubling times. And while conservatives are gloating about “owning the libs” or “drinking liberal tears,” a destabilizing force continues to poison our milieu, the milieu in which I think we have forgotten we are all steeped in. I can only hold out hope that after the bizarre victory lap, we begin to recognize the cost that the crab mentality is having on all of us.
Brian Bors
Athens, Ohio
