THE DESCENT INTO MADNESS: A SOCIAL CRITIQUE

On Memorial Day, on his Truth Social account, Donald Trump wrote the following: "HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS, WHO ALLOWED 21,000,000 MILLION PEOPLE TO ILLEGALLY ENTER OUR COUNTRY, MANY OF THEM BEING CRIMINALS AND THE MENTALLY INSANE, THROUGH AN OPEN BORDER THAT ONLY AN INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT WOULD APPROVE, AND THROUGH JUDGES WHO ARE ON A MISSION TO KEEP MURDERERS, DRUG DEALERS, RAPISTS, GANG MEMBERS, AND RELEASED PRISONERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, IN OUR COUNTRY SO THEY CAN ROB, MURDER, AND RAPE AGAIN — ALL PROTECTED BY THESE USA HATING JUDGES WHO SUFFER FROM AN IDEOLOGY THAT IS SICK, AND VERY DANGEROUS FOR OUR COUNTRY. HOPEFULLY THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, AND OTHER GOOD AND COMPASSIONATE JUDGES THROUGHOUT THE LAND, WILL SAVE US FROM THE DECISIONS OF THE MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL. BUT FEAR NOT, WE HAVE MADE GREAT PROGRESS OVER THE LAST 4 MONTHS, AND AMERICA WILL SOON BE SAFE AND GREAT AGAIN! AGAIN, HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY, AND GOD BLESS AMERICA!"

I ask the reader to step back and take a sober look at the fact that these words were publicly pronounced to the American people by the man holding the presidential office. Lies, disparagement, obscenity; there is no place in Trump's professional persona for being “presidential.” It is far gone. Forget the magisterial ambiance we have traditionally associated with the presidency. Trump is driven, with absolutely no restraint, by his obsessions and impulses. His peeves become policy. This utterance, like innumerable others, does not rise above the vulgarity of an eight-year-old schoolboy spewing venom in the schoolyard at his equally immature peers.

A problem we have with Trump at this stage is not solely his excesses, but that his excesses will shade into normalcy, leaving us and the nation diminished.

Rather than perseverate on Trump's mental illness and the destructive road it is taking us on, I prefer to look at some of the broader dynamics that have led us to the Trumpian moment. With a population in excess of 330 million, it is not beyond understanding that America has produced a Donald Trump. A more perplexing question is how tens of millions of our fellow citizens find him acceptable, and beyond acceptance rejoice in his utterances, and assess his leadership as worthy of their support and praise.

There are at least two perspectives we can take. The first is to examine the psychology of those, both individually, and en masse, who resonate with Trump's persona and leadership. Much has been written on this, much encompassing the psychology of fascism and authoritarianism. I think of the work of Erich Fromm and his Escape From Freedom as being especially germane. But there are many others. Such psychological insights are important in enabling us to see the similarities between the rise of fascism in mid-twentieth century Europe and what is ominously emerging today. It enables us to understand what we human beings are capable of.

The second approach is to examine larger social trends and sociological dynamics that have created an environment that has enabled Trump to gain hold. It is these dynamics I wish to consider. Here are several that come to mind:

The consumerist impulse and the dulling of the American mind

Having cited Erich Fromm's, Escape From Freedom, a related text was To Have and To Be. As a social psychologist, almost all of Fromm's works located the individual person in society and rendered analyses as to how individuals are shaped by it.

As the title suggests, we can direct our lives primarily toward having, that is consumerism and ownership, or toward experience, which encompasses the development of character. As a social critic writing in the post-war decades, Fromm believed that Americans had lost their way. Lives focused on possession and ownership, he argued, superseded the pursuit of experience, inclusive of productive activity and the cultivation of our lives with others. In other words, Fromm noted that we can dedicate ourselves primarily to the development of our human potentialities, or we can expend our aspirations and energies toward the acquisition of possessions outside of ourselves.

What was true when Fromm was writing has developed into mania in our time. Post-war prosperity set the stage for Ronald Reagan to valorize business while undercutting social welfare. Reagan pushed forward the traditional conservative trope of cutting taxes while declaring that the government is an enemy of the people. The Reagan program reached its high water, or so we assumed, with the coming of George W. Bush. Trump has taken us over the line and moved beyond conservatism and politics as we have known it. Conservatism, which is a coherent ideology, has exploded into chaos. We are experiencing politics fueled by vindictiveness, hatred, and appeal to baser instincts. We have entered a new territory dedicated to destroying the foundational structures of our constitutional order and the economy as we have known it.

The American public is ill-equipped to confront this destruction that Trump is imposing at a meteoric pace. I contend that it is lives dedicated to frenetic consumerism, to capitalism gone wild, that steer the mind away from serious considerations and understandings that politics requires.

Our lives are festooned with things, and the need to own them. Great attention is given to the newest iPhone, to the latest electronic gadgets, to the most flattering of new fashions, to blandishments of comfort and luxury, all purchased with the click of a computer and a credit card.

The point is that such pursuits are shallow. The happiness they deliver is temporary and gives rise to competitiveness in the pursuit of more. The perpetual growth of markets, I contend, is frenetic. It creates the basis for tension and anxiety.

Bypassed is the pursuit of greater meaning in life. For this one needs to push things aside and engage in quiet reflection. Such entails the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom. It requires lives lived with others directed toward love, compassion, and service to those in need. It involves orienting ourselves with a deep appreciation for the development of character. I come back to William Wordsworth, who writing in the early nineteenth century at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution observed, “The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away.”

The point to which this leads is that a society dedicated to acquisition is one that is vulnerable to exploitation. It lacks ballast and is unmoored from anchorages that tie us to life's purposes. In briefest terms, a society focused on possessiveness is ill-prepared to intelligently respond to, or even care about, violations perpetrated by Donald Trump and the reality foisted upon us by MAGA cohorts. The possession of things is a dynamic that drives popular consciousness. Concerns such as constitutional integrity, the rule of law, and democratic institutions feel remote and abstract, and for many is unintelligible and beside the point. They are readily ignored.

Our time is significantly unimpressed by moral values, and we suffer from a dearth of moral leaders. I suspect if they would arise, they would go unheard, lost in the cacophony wrought by commercialism.

The deification of celebrity

Ours is a society that adores celebrity and endows it with an authority it does not warrant. Being a great athlete, pop star, or movie idol does not make one a moral person. The exalted place of celebrity in American culture is manifested by the outlandish, and I argue, obscene, salaries celebrities garner. Being rich and famous are yoked together in a single concept.

Donald Trump assuredly fits this model. The marriage of wealth and stardom is an elixir that for many is well-nigh intoxicating. Trump's self-praise as a brilliant real estate mogul, despite shameless exaggeration and six bankruptcies, has brought him great adulation and cemented his following. Added to his outlandish and transgressive behavior was his fourteen years starring on The Apprentice, a garish reality TV show that showcased wealth, which, no doubt, many viewers longed for. Without becoming a popular celebrity, Trump may never have taken the White House.

The point, as before, is that celebrity is a vapid stand-in for substance. That a notable's identification with a product he or she knows little about should diminish credibility. But that common sense conclusion bears little traction with the American mind. By comparison, expertise and knowledgeable authority count for less. The power of celebrity, often vapid and unserious, is gargantuan.

The appeal of optics

“Optics” is a concept that has gained prominence in contemporary discourse. Image is now understood to inform verity and credibility. This has inescapably always been the case, but it has assumed greater power in both popular culture and in the ubiquitous drive for attention and marketability. How one looks, how one is groomed, and the renewed importance of body image, in most instances supersedes substance. We have become obsessed with gloss and chrome and care less for what lies beneath.

In the corporate and commercial arena, we have produced a vast professional class of advisors and influencers whose status is built on the ability to refine and gussy up how a person, product, or message is presented.

I have long been skeptical of the corporate preoccupation with “branding.” This, too, is driven by the yen to crimp appearances and presentation. Clearly, advertising and marketing is predicated on it. But the importance given to it, we may conclude, readily crosses lines. By definition, it deals with the surface of things and forestalls a critical analysis of the quality of what is being named and packaged.

We now have a president who is obsessed with optics. He is pathologically moved by appearances, most notably his own – how he coifs his hair and applies his makeup. Most despicably, he disparages women based on their appearance. His adolescent name-calling of his political opponents often denigrates them with reference to their physical attributes. He is a man whose preferences and policies are expressions of his peeves however trivial. Among those peeves is his discomfort with the disabled. He has rejected handicapped veterans from appearing in military parades. An article published in The Atlantic at the time of Trump's initial campaign cited an incident that took place in an elevator of one of his newly dedicated buildings. He inquired about the purpose of the small dots embedded on the panel indicating floor numbers. When told that they were for the sake of the blind, Trump had them removed. Clearly, he was discomforted by the presence of blind people in his building. We can readily conclude how he feels about those who fall from his standards of physical perfection.

Trump's discomfort with diversity and minorities, with identities that to his intolerant mind deviate from the norms of a perfect America, and his heavy-handed policies to rewrite American history by erasing references to violations, however egregious, is driven by his yen to replace fact with fantasy. It is another example of his obsession with image at the expense of substance. Optics Uber alles.

We cannot downplay the extraordinary danger Donald Trump is foisting on America in multiple dimensions. His persona and his initiatives partake of performance. In his obsession with appearances, with optics, Trump is well fitted to the contemporary zeitgeist. To the extent that the public is preoccupied with appearances, it downplays attention to the more serious realities that inform society and our democratic norms. Again, large swaths of the American citizenry are left impressionable to demagoguery.

Ideological reductionism

In tune with his own proclivities, Trump is a powerful proponent of anti-intellectualism. The fact that he attacks “elites,” has declared war on America's great universities, and is a man who does not read, is grossly incurious, and has declared his love for the “poorly educated,” are all manifestations of this ominous trend. Writ large, it is an assault on the most precious and defining values of Western civilization.

Here too, the tenor of our times comports with Trump's influence in subtle and significant ways. Popular discourse reveals that many have grown impatient with a cognitive environment that comprises facts, details, complexity, and nuance. A gross manifestation is evinced in the fact that people ostensibly read less. It's reported that students, even at top universities, find it difficult to read books. What reading is done takes place online. There was a brief time, when the internet first appeared, when one could peruse the publication of substantive blog pieces that were the digital equivalent of long-form journalism. This has diminished and has been greatly replaced by tweets, headlines, and chatter, much siloed by algorithms evoking emotional reactions rather than thoughtful reflection. It has helped create a divided and angry populace.

A case can be made that much thinking, which plays a socially divisive function, has congealed around ideologies that obviate attention from specific facts and details. Politics has always been driven by ideologies rather than facts that are constitutive of the complexities that explicate reality as it is. Ideologies are necessary shorthands that congeal multiple specifics into generalities that become readily usable. They are necessary simplifications.

Yet, ideological reductionism has arguably intensified. Examples have become increasingly commonplace. There is an enchantment with ideologies that have become fetishized. I am thinking, for example, of the invocation of “power inequities,” proffered to increasingly define human relations. There is an exaggerated employment of victimhood and victimization as tools to gain political leverage. Careers and reputations are destroyed through the employment of the “cancel culture,” wherein a single mishap, real or alleged, overlooks a person's character, intentions, and productive deeds deployed over a lifetime. No doubt, these ideological reductions often speak to real issues that need to be addressed. But their increasingly facile employment too often readily overlooks facts and complexities that need to render a fairer and richer appreciation of pertinent realities.

Such simplifications are the tools of demagogues and despots, and Donald Trump's narrow and disturbed mentality readily seeks this ground. America is truly involved in a culture war writ large. Trump and his MAGA cohorts have seized the moment. Destructive behavior rightly captures our attention.

But American society was built over hundreds of years. We have a cumulative history vested in countless institutions and funded norms that have defined us. We need to believe that those who hold to these norms comprise a majority of the American public. Unfortunately - and surprisingly - this majority at present is distressingly silent. Yet there is compelling reason to believe that the better angels of our nature will come forward. After the descent into madness, the best in the American experience will find new voices, and with the requisite activism, we will ascend into a brighter day.