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The Power of Fear
I was walking through the pedestrian-only shopping center of Lausanne the other day. It was cool but sunny and I had my patrol pack slung over my left shoulder. Inside were my gym things, sweaty from the two-hour workout I’d just completed. A loaf of freshly-baked bread was in the outside compartment, a yeasty promise of lunch soon to be enjoyed.
Directly ahead of me a small child around four years of age was having a massive tantrum in the middle of the street, screaming “I CAN drive a car! I CAN! I CAN!”
His mother stood half bent over her child and as I passed I heard her say, “Francois, you’re not Donald Trump, you know. This won’t do you any good.”
This was on the same day that the President of the USA stood before a gathering of the world’s press and asked foreign powers to discredit his political rival. It was within hours of that same President screaming that anyone who does anything or says anything he doesn’t like is a traitor who should be arrested and then presumably executed.
In Europe, where civilized norms continue to struggle to persist in the face of mindless populism, the absolute acquiescence of the US Republican Party to mob rule looks a lot like how the German right-wing parties of the 1930s endorsed Hitler’s rantings because the mob was behind him too.
