DAMN!

...it was such a good idea!

There are some advantages to having a Robin Williams mind (though mine is nowhere near as funny) in which information, ideas, perspectives, puns, Tom Swifties and spoonerisms bounce off each other as if they’ve been thrown into a Ninja blender. One of those advantages is...once in a while a piece of information bounces into a tidbit of wisdom bounces into a good idea someone once gave me, and a truth floats. And here is today’s Ninja smoothie prediction: America’s claim as the premier world leader is over.

In this case, the big idea comes from Yuval Noah Harari, the information and perspective from Tim Snyder. I hate to keep whacking you over the head with the brilliance emanating from the hearts and minds of these two colossal scholars, but the simple truths coming out of their combined observations reveal a sobering reality.

In Sapiens, Harari gives us one indisputable truth that I can’t get out of my head; that Homo sapiens’ capacity to create “fictions” allowed us to take over stewardship of the planet, in other words, we learned to make shit up - lie - in order to get large numbers of us to gather around that made-up shit.

In the beginning, not such a bad thing. There’s safety in numbers and plenty of bigger stronger predators to fear. But the more of us there were and the further we wandered away from each other, one group’s made-up shit would get sideways of another group’s made-up shit and conflict broke out. All groups kept growing in numbers and creating better and better ways to protect themselves; or if you prefer, better ways to wipe out those other groups. The bigger and more powerful a group became, the greater was their ability to take what they wanted.

Harari doesn’t have to lead us by the hand to see the inherent dangers of way outsized groups getting way too good at finding better ways to protect ourselves, while becoming way too attached to our made-up shit, and way too ready to do harm to anyone who refused to become attached.

Enter Tim Snyder, an Eastern European scholar of unmatched depth and breadth, giving us the hot poop on the fictions Adolf Hitler and his heartless companions sold the German people; fictions based on astonishing hate. Snyder didn’t have to lead us by the hand either; just detailed in plain language how the only thing the German people had to do for Hitler to succeed was...nothing; sit back and let the unforgivable become commonplace.

John Grady, the protagonist in Cormac McCarthy’s All The Pretty Horses, tells us, “There ain’t but one truth. The truth is what happened. It ain’t what come out of somebody’s mouth.” What comes out of Donald F Trump’s mouth in almost never the truth (”almost” because it’s possible he stumbles into one once every February 29th), and he would cut his tongue with a razor blade before letting “what happened” slip out of his tiny mouth.

I suppose Grady’s statement could be challenged from a philosophical perspective, but out in the world, the truth is what happened. What happened is that ICE officers murdered two American citizens in Minneapolis, who presented no threat. What happened is Donald F. Trump lost a free and fair election to Joe Biden. What continues to happen is Donald F. Trump is cashing in on millions and millions of dollars from his presidency and greasing the skids for his What-Me-Worry asshole kids to do the same. What continues to happen is that thousands upon thousands of people who depended on USAID are starving...to death. What continues to happen is thousands upon thousands of Palestinians are dying at the hands of Netanyahu and Donald F. Trump.

And that’s just off the top of my head.

When Tim Snyder compares Adolf Hitler’s runup to World War II to what’s going on in MAGA now, he’s not saying Donald F. Trump is Hitler. For one thing, Donald F. Trump isn’t smart enough to be Hitler, and the Hegseths, Bondis, Vances, Rubios et al, would have to immerse themselves completely in the study of Godawfulness to come close the standards of a Goebbels, Eichmann, Goering or Himmler. But Trump is every bit the liar Hitler was and his inner circle is every bit as loyal as was Hitler’s; and not one of them gives a shit about the welfare of any man, woman or child who can’t give them something.

What nation that values freedom would ever trust us again, knowing that even if we’re able to right ourselves through one more free and fair election, in four years we could turn back into a nation governed by Stephen King’s Walking Man?

Harari’s portrayal of the nature of Homo sapiens indicates that we can be as ghastly as we can be glorious, and the fictions each of us adheres to point us in one direction or the other. The problem is, Homo sapiens’ glory requires care, nurturance and continuous vigilance. It requires our willingness, by the rules we make, to open the doors of opportunity to people we don’t know, and who are different from us.

Homo sapiens’ ghastliness, on the other hand, need only be fed a continuous diet of human suffering.