Millions of people fell under the spell of Donald Trump’s lies and remain convinced of them to this day, writes the New York Times' Charles M. Blow, describing the United States' current political situation as “mass hysteria.”
In this Jan. 6, 2021, photo, President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a rally in Washington.I’m fascinated by mass hysterias. To me, their histories are both mysterious and incredibly revelatory about how human beings can lose themselves, dangerously so, in groupthink, a sort of psychotic contagion.
There have also been curious hysterias with fewer fatalities, like the Tanzania laughing epidemic of 1962, when hundreds of schoolchildren experienced bouts of hysterical laughter. As Christian F. Hempelmann, now an associate professor at Texas A&M University-Commerce, told The Chicago Tribune in 2003, this epidemic “had nothing to do with humor” as people also experienced pain, fainting, respiratory problems and sometimes rashes — symptoms he attributed to anxiety.
Trump has always been a liar and a hustler, but his impact before his presidency was marginal, sequestered to the edges of popular culture, his name synonymous with conspicuous consumption.Before entering politics, he could sell ostentatious apartments, promote a sham “university” and pump up a fraudulent foundation. His life was a shell game.
This all raises, to me, a profound and frightening series of questions: Can a lie, in periods like this one, simply be stronger than the truth? I have faith that history will properly diagnose this moment, and that many who now occupy high places will be brought low by it. But, in the present, without the perspective that time and distance can provide, is fantasy more seductive than reality?Some who have defended and downplayed the rioting on Jan.
For many Republicans, the truth — that the country was becoming more brown and less white, that the electorate was moving away from them, that they were losing control over American culture — was no longer tenable. Untruth, therefore, grew more alluring.
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