Falling in love with kind, witty and good-looking characters is too damn easy. The real challenge is to understand and accept those who are evil, greedy and destructive. At least give them a fighting chance!
Mon, 08 Mar 2021 00:00 UTC Are these the Nazis, Walter? No, Donny, these men are nihilists, there s nothing to be afraid of. -The Big Lebowski
Since the so-called insurrection of January 6, big media, big government, and big corporations have been demanding the collective scalp of the Trumpian alt-right. If we don t somehow make those 70 million Trump voters disappear, the subtext goes, American democracy is doomed.
The alt-right agrees that American democracy faces an existential threat, but disagrees vociferously about the nature of the threat. Whereas Democrats and corporate media consider Trump s cult of personality a fascist regime in the making, and his followers deluded and none-too-bright storm troopers, the deplorables, for their part, view the corporate Democrats as TDS-addled censorship-loving election thieves bent on establishing a woke dictatorship.
Nihilism was notably cited during U.S. Senate deliberations after rioting Trump supporters had been cleared from the Capitol.
“Don’t let nihilists become your drug dealers,” exhorted Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse. “There are some who want to burn it all down. … Don’t let them be your prophets.”
How else to describe the incendiary rhetoric and grievances that Donald Trump has peddled since November? What else to call the denial of the electorate’s will and his deep disdain for American institutions and traditions?
In 2016, I wrote about how Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky had, in his work, explored what happens to society when people who rise to power lack any semblance of ideological or moral convictions and view society as bereft of meaning. I saw eerie similarities with Trump’s actions and rhetoric on the campaign trail.