Lemmings

Lemmings

by Marco M. Pardi

“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass-movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the single-handed defiance of the world.” Eric Hoffer. The True Believer.

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Remember the lemmings? As a young boy I heard the myth of these small rodents racing en masse over cliffs to die on the rocks below. Each was driven by an impulse to suicide. Not being inclined to believe stories, I put that in my Maybe file. I was unaware of the fact this myth was centuries old and that some recent film makers had actually thrown lemmings off cliffs in making a film to further that myth. In fact deaths do occur during mass migrations, but not from suicide.

Another example of seemingly reckless behavior is found among the Wildebeests who migrate from Tanzania’s Serengeti plain to Kenya’s Masai Mara. Most of us have seen films of them rushing across a river while crocodiles feast on the young, the old, and the infirm. But this migration is driven by climate, not despair.

Today, while the facts of incidental deaths during mass migrations are more commonly understood, the principle underlying the myth still points uncomfortably toward demonstrable tendencies in human populations.

In his 1979 book, Piercing the Reich, Joseph E. Persico recounts an episode I had heard several times before. An agent recruited by the O.S.S. (Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA) had successfully infiltrated into Berlin during the last months of WWII. As the city was being reduced to rubble by Allied bombers he asked a Berliner, “Why does the entire nation choose to commit suicide for the sake of one lunatic?”

The man answered, “It’s difficult to get the lunatic certified. He happens to be director of the asylum.”

Does this sound familiar? It should. Among several analyses by trained and experienced professionals a recent letter to Congress signed by over 350 psychiatrists, CIA Profilers, and other mental health professionals warned that the mental health of Donald Trump, titular President of the United States, is deteriorating rapidly and presents a danger to the United States. Another 37 psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers said in a joint letter that President Donald Trump is unfit to be president.

“We believe that the grave emotional instability indicated by Mr. Trump’s speech and actions makes him incapable of serving safely as president.”

It should be noted that these and similar letters and opinion pieces were written and publicized long before the Covid-19 pandemic and the related economic meltdown. That is, they were formed before Mr. Trump claimed the virus was a Democratic hoax intended to discredit him, that the virus would disappear in warm weather “like a miracle”, that wearing a mask was for sissies and ingested or injected bleach would clear out the virus. As of this writing the U.S. death toll stands at over 135,000, many attributable to the weeks long delays in any responses or actions taken by the administration charged with protecting the safety of the American people.

But while the administration advised us to “not believe everything you see or read” scientists and scientific institutions began finding their voices. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading Infectious Diseases expert in the United States – and much of the world, and the Federal Centers for Disease Control & Prevention – CDC, emerged from scrambled first responses to positions of internationally recognized authority. CDC, a preeminent scientific institution always muzzled each time a Republican administration takes power, is regaining its voice in the face of outright lies spoken by a former game show host and repeated by the man who claims to be “President”.

However, the emergence of Dr. Fauci and the CDC is apparently threatening to this person, characterized by lifelong Profound Narcissism and Sociopathy. Whitehouse officials have acknowledged that a large part of Trump’s antipathy to Fauci stems from the much more favorable media “ratings” accruing to Fauci.

Yet, as of this writing the collated national polls show a disapproval rating for Trump of 55.6% and an approval rating of 40.3%. Some might take heart in the higher disapproval rating, but 40.3% is a far higher percentage than that of lemmings lost on a migration or Wildebeests culled by crocodiles. It strongly suggests that a major part of the electorate is unable to process factual information coming at them daily.

Perhaps the most ironic part of this is that getting Trump elected seems not to have been the primary focus of Vladimir Putin, rather it is the icing on the cake of sewing broad and crippling distrust in the democratic process itself. And who, after seeing what had been believed to be the least likely outcome of a democratic election held by mature and educated people, would not wonder that something had gone terribly wrong with the democratic process? Looking at the comprehensive economic and environmental wreckage and the hardened polarization among previously amiable co-workers, neighbors, and even family members, that’s got to be some cake Putin got.

By the way, for those who point to the pre-pandemic employment figures and the stock market, please realize those gains were made almost entirely by de-regulation of everything from the safety of your drinking water to the air you breathe and the products you buy and use, including previously somewhat safe food. And, look closely at the employment figures. When they are taken from employer reports they fail to recognize that two or three employers may have hired the same person; many people have two or three jobs due to the low pay and poor or absent benefits in any one of them. The stock market is not an index of how the economy is presently doing. It is an indicator of how the economy is expected to do. People buy stocks in a company on the expectation the company will increase its earnings, not on how the company is currently doing. In short, such investment is a gamble of investing in an imagined outcome. Look at the people who lost fortunes on the “dot-com” bust. How many lemmings went over that cliff?

Readers of this site know that I’ve written extensively of the development of Fascism in the United States. Interestingly, despite Donald Trump’s posturing and gestures imitating Mussolini, I don’t credit him with being intelligent enough to understand and follow an established system of political thought. To the extent that his expressed philosophy and actions do resemble those found in Fascism it is only an incidental resemblance provided by his truly Fascist handlers. So, instead, I credit the American Fascist Party of the 1930’s and early 1940’s which went underground during WWII and re-emerged in the late 1970’s with Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell as their chief puppet and chief spokesperson respectively. For background I refer the reader to Chris Hedges’ 2006 book, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the war on America.

I remember an advertising slogan from “Madison Avenue” that said basically, “A million people can’t be wrong!” Well, over 67 million people voted for Trump and other “Republican” party candidates. I’m no expert on lemming populations but this seems to be an unusually large wave eager to race over a cliff. Ordinarily I would stand aside and bid them farewell. But this wave threatens to take much of the rest of life on this planet with it. Like potential stock investors, we might examine this prospectus and wonder if this is a company in which we want to invest; is this a company with a future?