"WHOEVER CAN MAKE YOU believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities", observed the always outspoken Francois Marie Arouet, who pen named himself "Voltaire", and himself refused to believe absurdities or commit atrocities, such as religious dogma, though he himself was immersed in both, being surrounded by both in eighteenth century Catholic France. Voltaire resisted both, and spoke out against both religious absurdities and religious atrocities in his famous admonition regarding the Catholic church: "Crush the infamous thing!" Risky business, philosophizing. His salvation, so to speak, was that people in high paces knew perfectly well that although he was outspoken, he told he damned truth, and secretly agreed with him. There aren't many people sufficiently charismatic or persuasive to make you people believe absurdities with sufficient conviction to inspire them to commit atrocities, but, when one comes along, all hell usually breaks loose. There aren't even many people who can run for high political office, slick tongued though politicians often are, lose badly and obviously, claim to actually have won the election and that the election was stolen from him, make this absurd claim before the votes have even been counted, make it without any supporting evidence, and be instantly and forever believed by seventy five million presumably reasonably intelligent albeit sycophantic followers, notwithstanding his notorious well deserved reputation as a chronic, pathological prevaricator, and to have many of those same followers proceed to attempt to overthrow the government and the allegedly stolen election results with a violent, atrocious insurrection, but Donald Trump can, and did. For that, Donald Trump deserves credit, though of a dubious sort. The big lie, often repeated, becomes believed, as Joseph Goebbels knew well. The atrocities then follow. For people like Hitler and Trump to accomplish their nefarious goals, or to attempt to, by telling big lies might be expected, but is not nearly as shocking nor surprising as millions of people believing them and acting as accomplices. "We are never deceived", sagely stated Goethe; "we only deceive ourselves". Goethe, like Voltaire a sage student of human nature, understood that under all circumstances, we are all responsible for what we believe, no matter who or by what methods somebody tries to influence our beliefs, for the simple reason that under all circumstances, al beliefs are ultimately, a matter of personal choice. there always exists the option of deciding, a priori, that everything anybody ever tells you is a lie, an option which came to my friend one night while he strutted around my town laughing hysterically under the influence of LSD, and which to this day I consider worthy of consideration. Seventy five million American chose and continue to choose to believe the biggest lie of all by a demonstrable, pathological serial liar. They believe it only because it provides them a convenient vehicle to their desired state of victimhood, and way to escape accepting the crushing reality of a humiliating, unthinkable electoral defeat, and to turn it into a pseudo crusade for pseudo justice. That they are turning themselves into traitors and criminals by undermining the democratic system of government upon which their country functions predicated is to them. apparently, unimportant. They are mentally ill by choice, traitorous, treasonous, and worthy only of condemnation. Trump and his followers, like Hitler and his, will, as another sage leader once said, forever live in infamy.
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