Flannery O’Connor’s short story, Good Country People, features a Bible salesman who steals a woman’s artificial leg, leaving her stranded in a hay loft in the family barn. That’s just the bare plotline. Like any of O’Connor’s stories in the broad Southern Gothic tradition, it has multiple layers of irony, elements of the gruesome and grotesque, and some pointed moral lessons.
Literature has plenty of examples of devious purveyors of the Holy Word, including and especially Sinclair Lewis’s “Elmer Gantry,” which profiles a classic hypocrite whose philandering ways belie his put on piety. Though there’s no evidence he actually said it or wrote it, Lewis is often (mis)quoted as the author of the adage, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” Despite failures to establish a provenance, this apt message has persisted through decades, revived as it suits the times, as it surely does today.
Then there’s Dr. Johnson, whose “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel” has managed to survive almost four centuries, surely because it so often fits the players and times we live in.
Those of us who grew up during the Red Scare of the early 1950s weren’t bamboozled when memes about a “deep state” became the widespread descriptor of a federal government routinely vilified by talk show hosts, paid liars, and faux news broadcasters. Same old tune, different words.
The point man for the Red Scare was Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, a facile liar distinguished especially by his willingness to destroy people’s lives in service to his narcissistic political ambitions. McCarthy’s chief counsel was Roy Cohn. Cohn helped McCarthy gin up phony charges of communist conspiracies against American citizens whose lives subsequently became ruined when they were blacklisted. Totalitarianism always features persecution of people who can’t fight back with equal force of their oppressors.
After McCarthy was finally dishonored and run out of office, Cohn became a mentor and attorney for Donald Trump. It was Roy Cohn who taught Trump the McCarthy playbook of serial lies, self-promotion, deflection, scare tactics and race-baiting that later became Trump’s signature political style.
Roy Cohn was finally disbarred in 1986, shortly before he died of AIDS. By then, Trump had established himself as a major player in New York’s deep sewer of political corruption, especially involving anything to do with construction. Trump’s carefully constructed image of the fabulously wealthy playboy was catnip to the tabloid press, even while he was widely regarded as a self-infatuated imposter whose brags about his super powers in business were ultimately belied by serial bankruptcies and tawdry philandering.
The rise of Trump as a tabloid celebrity occurred during a post war economic boom that brought about the greatest expansion of the middle class in U.S. history. That boom and pressures of the times also engendered an educational renaissance. As the nation recovered from the trauma of World War II, its leaders realized the crucial roles science, learning and industry had played in the defeat of the totalitarian forces responsible for some of the most evil horrors ever wrought on humankind by humankind.
When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, leaders in the United States feared the communist empire would soon gain military advantages that would enable them to expand their influence and sovereignty in much the same way Germany and its allies had attempted before they were defeated. The resulting arms race poured billions of dollars into research and education.
The emphasis on education included a push toward wider literacy. As the growing middle class hungered for better understanding of the forces that had driven us to world war, scientists, historians and scholars gained broader stature and respect than ever before in the nation’s history.
At 1249 pages, William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich became a Book of the Month Club selection in the United States and an international best seller. Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, despite the dense style of a German philosopher in the tradition of Martin Heidegger, became the essential field guide for recognizing the hallmarks of emerging and established totalitarian regimes.
“Setting up anyone to say ‘we lost because of the Jews’ is outrageous and dangerous,” the American Jewish Committee said about Donald Trump. “Thousands of years of history have shown that scapegoating Jews can lead to antisemitic hate and violence.”
Even memoirs like Albert Speer’s Inside the Third Reich, drew wide readership. Speer was Adolph Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production. A highly intelligent, well-educated man, Speer admitted he was spellbound by Hitler’s evil charisma; he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment at the Nuremberg Trials. A consistent theme in all the works describing totalitarian regimes was the ease with which people can become habituated to the escalating cruelty and terror that are inseparable elements in the rise of totalitarian dictators.
Among other signs of totalitarianism, xenophobia, racism, scapegoating and ongoing fictitious revisions of history, along with the destruction of truth, tradition, learning and law, rank highest. Anyone looking for an apt contemporary example need only consider the demonization of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. The vast majority are here legally.
Both Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have made inflammatory claims that Haitians in Springfield have eaten residents’ pets. In response to these vile claims, the Republican Governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, has written,
“Springfield is having a resurgence in manufacturing and job creation. Some of that is thanks to the dramatic influx of Haitian migrants who have arrived in the city over the past three years to fill jobs. They are there legally. They are there to work… our people and our history deserve better than to be falsely portrayed.”
DeWine added that though he disagrees with current border policy, Springfield manufacturing business owners told him that they would not have been able to stay in business without their Haitian employees. It is one thing to disagree with policy and attempt to revise it through political means. It is quite another to attack, slander, and defame legal and highly vulnerable immigrants with lies and threats. Springfield citizens have been deluged with dozens of bomb threats since Trump and Vance spread their despicable lies.
Defaming, dehumanizing and demonizing vulnerable minorities is a tactic straight out of the totalitarian playbook; doing so with despicable lies while refusing to admit to spreading such falsehoods is standard totalitarianism. It is a sign of our times that so few of us have been willing to condemn Donald Trump and J.D. Vance for spreading lies that endanger the lives of innocent people.
What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”
Ms. Arendt might have added that when we believe “they all lie” and there is only “fake news,” we lose the capacity to judge based on any criterion other than instinctive reactions to momentary stimuli. The recurring stimuli for totalitarians are fear, anger, and retribution. Their tools for instilling fear, anger and retribution are racism, xenophobia, extravagant lies and terror.
Like Hannah Arendt and William Shirer, George Orwell was both witness to and chronicler of the rise of totalitarianism. In his most widely read novel, 1984, the protagonist is Winston Smith. Winston Smith works for the ironically named “Ministry of Truth,” an agency in the totalitarian government that has achieved dominion in Orwell’s depiction of a dystopian future. Smith’s job is to delete and rewrite history.
”Your [Trump’s] words preemptively blaming Jews for your potential election loss is of a piece with millennia of antisemitic lies about Jewish power,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs. “It puts a target on American Jews. And it makes you an ally not to our vulnerable community but to those who wish us harm. Stop.”
Today, much of our history has already been deleted, not because of any government agency, but because some of us have forgotten it and others never learned it. Nonetheless, history and literature are crucial to our survival as a free nation because they offer us our only enduring lessons in liberty and justice for all.
Current efforts to revise history include attempts to ignore it in the form of evasive comments like, “I’m focused on the future,” about an insurrection that sought to deprive 81 million American citizens of their vote while threatening the life of the Vice President of the United States, a Vice President who has subsequently refused to endorse his own former president as he seeks another term.
Mike Pence isn’t the only former prominent government official who has refused to endorse Donald Trump. Ten retired U.S. generals and admirals have endorsed Kamala Harris for President of the United States. Those same generals and admirals have clarified Donald Trump’s key role in the chaotic withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, another case where Trump and his allies have distorted facts in service to their lust for power:
“The former military officers highlight the chaotic 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, placing the blame on Trump’s shoulders for leaving President Biden and Harris with no plans to execute a withdrawal after his administration made a deal with the Taliban to pull U.S. service members from the country.”
“A deal with the Taliban.” How many more damning facts can there be for Donald Trump, whose ghost writer for The Art of the Deal has since declared he regrets his role in publicizing a man he considers unfit to serve as president?
The record is clear. When the history of the America project toward truth and justice is written, it will be recounted by the men and women who fought and continue to fight for freedom from the multiple evils of totalitarianism.
Freedom dies under the oppressive weight of totalitarian lies, threats, and terror. History shows that Americans defeated totalitarianism under Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman in World War II, under Ronald Reagan during the Cold War, and will defeat it again by the one power totalitarianism can’t withstand, the power of the vote in free and fair elections.
The San Joaquin Valley extends from San Joaquin County south to Kern County. Stockton, Lodi, Manteca, Modesto, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Visalia and Bakersfield are only the largest among the towns and cities that make up the greatest agricultural region in the world, a region that values hard-working immigrants as among its greatest citizens. Three San Joaquin Valley congressional districts are crucial to the defeat of totalitarianism in America.
In California Congressional District 9, the choice for freedom is Josh Harder. In California Congressional District 13, the choice for freedom is Adam Gray. Farther south, in California Congressional District 22, the choice for freedom is Rudy Salas.
Today’s Republicans have shown almost universal cowardice and moral depravity in their willingness to support the Big Lie about Trump’s electoral loss and subsequent incitement of insurrection. Too many have been silent or supportive of Trump’s and Vance’s demonization and dehumanization of legal Haitian immigrants. Those few who have stood for honor and integrity have been drummed out of the party.
It is now incumbent on the American people to repel the totalitarian movement led by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. The persecution of vulnerable minorities, now blamed for everything from inflation to housing shortages, must end. The denial of women’s rights must end. Trump’s preemptive threats against Catholics and Jews, blaming them should he lose the election, must end. Injustice is always wrong and should always be vehemently opposed.
United, we stand.
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Reading and being informed about history and politics is important, discussing your insights with others is important, and working to help elect politicians with integrity is important. There are many groups that are actively campaigning against tyranny, such as Activate America, Indivisible and the Central Valley Democratic Club. If you are ready to turn your political hobbyism into activism, these next few weeks could make a huge difference in the outcome of the election. Write postcards urging others to vote on November 5, place a Harris – Walz sign in your yard, or walk a precinct or two. The time to act is NOW!