Don’t Follow Leaders

By Wade Hudson

Blind loyalty to Trump is scary. But the reluctance of Bernie’s followers to criticize their candidate is cause for concern.

In New York magazine,” Andrew Sullivan writes:

It is when a democracy has ripened as fully as this, Plato argues, that a would-be tyrant will often seize his moment....  He pledges, above all, to take on the increasingly despised elites. And as the people thrill to him as a kind of solution, a democracy willingly, even impetuously, repeals itself.
...What mainly fuels this is precisely what the Founders feared about democratic culture: feeling, emotion, and narcissism, rather than reason, empiricism, and public-spiritedness. Online debates become personal, emotional, and irresolvable almost as soon as they begin.
...The more emotive the candidate, the more supporters he or she will get.
...Sarah Palin emerged as proof that an ardent Republican, branded as an outsider,... could also triumph in this new era.
...In Eric Hoffer’s classic 1951 tract, The True Believer, he sketches the dynamics of a genuine mass movement.… Hoffer’s core insight was to locate the source of all truly mass movements in a collective sense of acute frustration. Not despair, or revolt, or resignation — but frustration simmering with rage.
...These working-class communities, already alienated, hear — how can they not? — the glib and easy dismissals of “white straight men” as the ultimate source of all our woes. They smell the condescension and the broad generalizations about them — all of which would be repellent if directed at racial minorities — and see themselves, in Hoffer’s words, “disinherited and injured by an unjust order of things.”
...Mass movements, Hoffer argues, are distinguished by a “facility for make-believe … credulity, a readiness to attempt the impossible.”
...The most powerful engine for such a movement — the thing that gets it off the ground, shapes and solidifies and entrenches it — is always the evocation of hatred. It is, as Hoffer put it, “the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying elements.”
...What makes Trump uniquely dangerous in the history of American politics — with far broader national appeal than, say, Huey Long or George Wallace — is…the threat of blunt coercion and dominance.
...Trump is an extinction-level event. It’s long past time we started treating him as such.

That analysis struck me as compelling. But Sullivan also included a provocative assertion that caused me to pause and reconsider my thoughts about the election. He declared:

Those still backing the demagogue of the left, Bernie Sanders, might want to reflect that their critique of Clinton’s experience and expertise — and their facile conflation of that with corruption — is only playing into Trump’s hands.

His statement prompted me to post some specific criticisms of Bernie on Facebook and Wade’s Wire (I’m posting 300-word pieces there daily), including:

• The Future of the Democratic Party
• Scapegoating, Violence, and Bernie’s Campaign
• Admitting Mistakes
• Bernie and Racism

Though my criticisms were within the context of overall strong support for Bernie, a number of readers objected. Some replied with non sequiturs that merely praised Bernie and avoided the issue. One said my point was so obvious that stating it was a “jab.” Another insisted Bernie’s record is “impeccable.”

Some of those and other Bernie supporters display a bothersome cult-like loyalty. His campaign has some of the same oppressive characteristics seen in Trump’s, as described by Plato, Hoffer, and Sullivan. All forms of populism are dangerous. On Wade’s Wire, I address some of those dangers.

Who’s elected President is less important than developing an inclusive, bottom-up, national activist organization that can effectively pressure Congress and the White House.

I’m still hoping that Bernie will help build that organization. The door is open.