Trump as a Vessel for Some of the Worst Instincts in Human Beings

 

 

This is a bold assertion.  And I would hasten to add that Trump is also the vessel for some of the good instincts in people. 

 

The bad quality I refer to is our immutable tendency to pit ourselves against other people, to hold ourselves up as being different and better; to picture and present ourselves as "victims".

 

We have seen this throughout history.  Without suggesting equivalency, it drove the Nazi and Fascist movements in the last century.  It drove the foundation for slavery in our country and others too.  And for purposes of this essay, it drove the creation of the Second Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. 

 

This movement eventually drew 5-8 million members, including senators and governors from many states and mayors from many cities.  The movement even pushed to get a Ku Klux Klan member as vice-president on the 1924 Democratic ticket.

 

The movement was animated by hatred of Jews, Blacks, Catholics and immigrants.  The early part of the 20^th century had seen a huge influx of Southern Europeans.

 

The language of the leaders of the Klan denunciating immigrants as "poison" mirrors what Trump is saying today and others opposed to immigration before him have said before.

 

The Klan drove immigration reform as one of its top priorities.  They got their wish in 1924 with the National Origins Act, which passed the House and the Senate with overwhelming margins.  The law’s quota system was based on assigning future immigration quotas based on the census of 1890 before most Southern European and Polish Catholics and Jewish refugees had crossed the Atlantic.  The objective of restricting entry of the purloined groups was to turn back the clock.  America would be replenished with people who looked like the ethnic face of the places where the Klan lived.  The effect was immediate and dramatic.  While in 1921, nearly one-quarter million Italians immigrated to the United States, that number had fallen by 90% by 1925.  Similarly, while 200,000 Russian Jews arrived on American shores in 1921, a year after the passage of the Immigration Act, only 2,000 were let into the country.  Left behind in Poland were three-and-a-half million Jews who would be targeted with mass execution in little more than a decade.  Voting with Klan was the easy thing to do, for the backlash against immigration had reached a point where a majority in office were ready to close the gates.”

 

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Why, can we ask, did this movement, which had 5-8 million members in the mid-1920s collapse to only about 100,000 members by the end of the 1920s? 

 

A principal reason was the result of a trial which turned around the indictment and verdict to convict one of the handful of top leaders of the Second Ku Klux Klan, T.C. Stephenson, of having poisoned a woman, Madge Oberholtzer, this leading to her death.   There were other factors that drove the decline of the Klan’s reputation and membership.  Economic conditions had improved as the decade went on, the pressure of immigration had been relieved by the notorious 1924 Immigration Act, and there was corruption among other members of the Klan leadership.  But the results of this trial were decisive.  The reputation of the Klan was destroyed as it was clear that the pursuit of the values most Americans believed in were violated. 

 

I can’t help but contrast this to the very different reaction to the conviction of Donald Trump in the" hush money" trial but, more than that, to the other allegations and actions attributed to  him that make clear his utter lack of character.

 

What has changed in our nation over the 100 years since that trial?  Has the inner day-to=day goodness of the minds and actions of people changed all that much?  I rather doubt it.  But what has changed is the public acceptance of behavior that is, on the face of it, unethical and lacking in decency.  A cynicism about how people in government and elites in general live has crept across the nation for many, many people.  Our judgment of what is right and wrong has been dulled.  Our willingness to accept abhorrent behavior has increased. 

 

What can change this?  It has to start with the home, what young people learn from their parents as to what constitutes good behavior; what examples they see.  And it has to be underpinned by education:  the telling of stories that show us at our best and at our worst.  We need more of these stories in our schools. 

 

There is another question that emerges from my examination of the relationship of what drove the Second Ku Klux Klan and what drives the MAGA movement today.  It is, what creates the environmental condition where a MAGA movement can take life, for the presence of the instincts motivating it will always be there?  My answer is that this is more likely to happen when the existing economic order is failing to support the individual, when the system is not working for the common man.  What drives this importantly is opening inequality in wealth and opportunity and the corrosive effect of government incompetence and corruption.  These negative features today are far more transparent due to the ever-present information coming from social media and the bifurcated media platforms that exist far more than in the past.

 

Seeing ourselves as victims is something that has always been present and probably always will be.  It can be reduced by leadership which has the wisdom and courage to put in place policies which, to the extent possible, provide opportunity for all and persuade people that we really are in this together, that we are stronger together than we are alone or fighting one another.  This is what leaders like Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel and Abraham Lincoln were able to do.  It is why I so regret that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, because I believe he had the ability to do that for our country in the late 1960s.