I try to imagine myself as one of the many sane, decent residents of Ohio, listening to the outrageous tales of illegal Haitian immigrants seizing and consuming the pets of homeowners. I realize the cult, owing to one's membership within the cult, have to accept the stories as some sick sort of loyalty oath, but how does this play with moderate Republicans and independents?

And now the Proud Boys are coming to town, emulating the Guardian Angels from 50 years or so ago. I would think the utter absurdity of this, the bomb threats, the closing of schools, and the potential for real violence, will motivate many to vote against this derangement, this insanity.

Over the last decade or so, I foolishly assumed we were at an inflection point, where our cognitive antibodies would overwhelm the nihilistic contagion that so deeply infected so many Americans.

So many times I've reflected on Voltaire's warning that "those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. "

I have learned so much during the Trump years. I now appreciate how fragile democracy is. I've learned the power of shared grievances and how many will fiercely rally around them, and the related connection with the human need for identity within a community, and our possibly most essential desire for meaning in our lives. I've witnessed how bad ideas, repeated endlessly, can infect our perspective and how our innate cognitive biases often helplessly draw us to the righteous, comforting fictions wherein we slay the evildoer. I now better understand the atrocities of the past and how they can easily be replicated in the future. 

Peter T.