PANDEMIC DIARY

“SCARED PEOPLE ARE SCARY”
October 14, 2021

[A note to all: Much of the information provided was initiated and sourced from last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, by Virginia Heffernan entitled, “Tech Mogul Provocateur”, a review of a book titled, THE CONTRARIAN written by Max Chafkin about the life of Peter Theil, a multi-billionaire, right-wing political kingmaker, and repentant white supremacist.] The ideas are wholly mine.

"He didn’t know much about death. Only that it could be as unpredictable as a lightning bolt and infinitely quieter after it arrived” from the novel “The Keeper of Lost Causes” by Jussi Adler Olsen

Heffernan opens her review recalling a podcast she listened to some years ago, “This Is Actually Happening”, in which a white supremacist recalled an incident and “formative childhood experience”. One night his mother asked him: “You enjoying your burger?” She continued, “Did you know it’s made of cow?”
”Something died?” the boy, then 5 years old, replied.
”Everything living dies,” she said. “You’re going to die.”

Is there a better way to imbue a fear of death in a youngster’s soul than this mother’s premature, procedurally incisive scalpel. This young child was plagued and afflicted with death. His particular handling of his abiding terror was affecting a “fear-concealing swagger” which quickly developed into more of a fascist high-step.

The author of the book’s review then reads “The Contrarian” and observes that Peter Thiel experienced a similar background story. “When he was 3, according to Chafkin, Thiel asked his father about a rug, which his father, Klaus Thiel, explained was cowhide. “Death happens to all animals. All people”, Klaus said. “It will happen to me one day. It will happen to you.” There is no simple way to address the subject of death. It is, most assuredly, not intended as an introduction to life. There must be an appropriate time to speak of death to your child. But, we can agree, not as the child’s consciousness is just beginning to bud into awareness.

However, this is not a discussion of parenting skills. What is common, and to me not just or merely applicable to these individual children, is the affect of fear, terror and self-loathing at such an early age. Peter Thiel also adopted a swagger never recovering from the the mind’s repetitive bulletin that death lingers in the daily background. However, his was not only physically manifested, he became bold, brash, intolerant, a bully, and all these later evolved into a “hodgepodge of libertarian and authoritarian beliefs.” He could not control death, yet he found ways to control an overactive brain and compensate for his fundamental fears.

The border dispute, as an example, [and here I will play the role of 5-cent psychologist] is less about the obvious objection to an influx of immigrants, or their being drug addicts, criminals, or those who drain Americans of jobs. It is a border in their minds - a symbolic line that if crossed the ideological internal pain would be too great. Too much giving in; too much acceptance of others telling us how to live; too much invading our land and homes. Just like the intolerable rush of a child’s unending horror. Death.

Thiel spoiled for a fight, choosing to collide with those he identified as liberals, “meaning anyone who he suspects of snubbing him". Their offense being a non-recognition of his self-proposed superiority, attention to his blatantly wounded vanity, and assertion by the absence of any recognition that Thiel mattered at all. Despite the fact that he aced the SAT’s, his strutting arrogance and transparent bullishness won him no friends or accolades. A classmate at Stanford reflects, “He viewed liberals through a lens as people who were not nice to him. He’d chosen [and I would add consciously or unconsciously] to reject those who’d rejected him.” [Does any of this sound familiar?]

INTOLERANCE OF DEATH IS INTOLERANCE OF LIFE ITSELF [That’s me speaking]

In any case, Thiel’s youthful life proceeds subjected to his father’s complicit acceptance and approval of apartheid as owner of a uranium mine in the Namib desert and the support of conjured evidence of a superior race. His literary favorite was Ayn Rand; he supported Ronald Reagan; he excoriated liberals at Stanford; and, short-stinted work at an old, well-established and prestigious law firm that disappointed and bored him because there were “no liberals to fight.”

Suffice it to say, well-defended and brilliant, Chris Thiel had all the right stuff to create and amass a fortune. As creator and founder of PayPal he made billions. He partnered with Elon Musk in an unholy alliance which, through some bumps, stops, and starts, led to PayPal going public and billions of more earnings. As Chafkin states, “Whereas (Steve) Jobs viewed business as a form of cultural expression, even art, for Thiel and his peers it was a mode of transgression, even activism.” That subsequently included investing millions of dollars in Facebook in the mid-2000’s, latching on to Mark Zuckerberg admiring of his information war and manipulation of data for financial gain. Today, he is the founder and CEO of Palantir, an international, ultra-high digital security company.

I want to be clear, I am projecting and conjecturing from this point forward so this may sound overly simplistic. Yet, even generalizations contain a modicum of truth. So, here we are at a point where a growing population of Americans are publicly decrying liberal politics. Their beliefs, I would assert, formed at early childhood must have inclined a large swath of our citizenry to grow up with feelings of inferiority, inadequacy and dejection leading to not only a panoply of fears but, more importantly, to a line-up of compensatory behaviors which laid dormant until, via the previous administration, given permission to spew lies and hate like a knife cut to a main artery as a consequence of their unconscious fears. DEBILITATION AS DEBATE.

I used to joke that it was hard to tell who were the patient’s inside the mental facility, and who were the doctors and nurses, the analogy made famous by Ken Kesey in “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”. And now, we find ourselves in a situation where, however reasonable aspects of their complaints may be, the ‘crazies’ are a growing, even dominant force in our nation’s politics. Having said that, it is important to realize that fear is inherent to and a result of child rearing in general. So, this phenomenon is not restricted in any way to this population. It is though reasonable to assume, I would contend, that the degree of illogic, stupidity, rigidity, scorn and violence is representative of a population so deeply hurt and marred that their demands are neither rational or realistic and represent a total rejection of any ideas, evidence or lifestyles that lie outside their limited and highly constrained order.

The question arises, then what is to be done? My response was and is to repudiate. Repudiate instantaneously. Repudiate with certainty of its right, its humanness, its consistency with The U.S. Constitution. Repudiate utilizing all aspects of the law. Damn the blow-back. To hell with surveys and public opinion polls. As far back as 2015, I encouraged commentators (screaming at the television screen) to forcefully rebuff our former President (I still cannot believe it as I write). Not to dismiss his stated policy differences, not to pay attention to his verbal idiosyncrasies, not to conjure along with his sexual exploits, rather to renounce his hate, venality, and dishonesty and with strong and immediate consequences.

I know, as many of you do, that it is easy to hate. Hate purges the mind of all gray. It makes all things black and white, right and wrong. There is no middle ground. Hate is repressions aria. The extent to which enmity exists today in a minority population is dangerous, and more so because they are in possession of more armaments than ever before and nearly equal to our professional military, save for the atomic variety. We are on the cusp of an authoritarian and autocratic takeover. We have reached a point of normalization of heretofore behaviors outside usual boundaries. Fair play is a quaint nod to the past. Civility, a lost contract between old men. The unacceptable is acceptable. Everything that could not be said has been said. Whether you are a Native American, if you are identified as a not attractive woman or man, if you are physically challenged, if you are speech impaired, if you ar LGBTQ or ‘Trans”…or if you simply disagree, you are the enemy. When that happens there is no defense of innocence. It becomes, ironically, more difficult to identify and address, in our land of ‘free speech’, what is simply legislative opposition, from what is nationalistic extremism.

The majority populous, as in pre-Nazi Germany, also did not know what to do. They waited. Too long! “Maybe Hitler would not be so bad.” “Let’s see what happens.” “It won’t get that bad. Will it?” We are waiting. And, I ask why? What are we waiting for? We should be on the streets marching in lock step…not waiting for a goose stepping army. Not for some idealistic wish list of desired laws. No. We must garner the whole of the population that opposes hate, lies, deception and the illegal use of one’s position to do as he pleases. There is an enormity to the opposition’s pent-up anger. These objectors, though, have no claim to be legally, legislatively or otherwise treated unfairly. They seem not to have accepted that they are part of a rapidly changing society and, like the rest of us in varying degrees, learning how to keep up. The problem is real but their issues and radical exceptionalism is uncalled for. And, they are white, wish to keep the country white, and claim it as if that is inherently a truism for America. Were these issues and beliefs held by our Black brothers, there would have been armies standing against them have rivers of blood in the streets.

I wonder if that was how the German SS, Schutzstaffel (literal meaning “Protection Squad” began. We now have men and women participating in an ex-military army that rivals or exceeds most fighting forces throughout the world. And, like the SS, these groups are being encouraged to act on their own in support of a charismatic leader. Will their new roles be little toy soldiers defending the corrupt institutions and leaders who rob the natural resources and wealth of a country who own multiple estate dwellings on coastlines and on mountaintops. The popping of Dom Perignon as a daily ritual. The dining on goose and caviar. The attending of theater and events where those in power can be rushed by crowds wishing to view his or her excellency panting to receive a wink and a nod. The most scary thing is to consider that the U.S. has the most powerful military in the world. Who then possesses the capability of assembling an opposition that could defend democracy once it has slipped into irrelevance, if not oblivion. One has to wonder where do we go from here?

The reality of a horror scenario is sinking in. Its pertinence unavoidable and urgent…if too late. A takeover of legislative bodies replacing elected officials with “hacks”. Appointing Supreme Court Justices who are “ideological cronies”.

We no longer only suffer the usual and, by comparison, fanciful familial abuses, but additionally are subjected to societal trauma. The consequence is that ‘normal’ society becomes imbued with fear, like atmospheric white noise or electromagnetic waves, unseen, unheard but affecting the neurology of the body. The fear, in fact, is logical and a rational response to events. But, to live wary, suspicious, vigilant and distrustful is hardly a life. Hardly the freedom we have come to blindly accept. We have too long dangerously rationalized the dangers. We have too long accepted the unacceptable. We have too long justified the unjustifiable. We have too long excused the inexcusable. We have too long marginalized the worst in us. We have for too long lost ourselves in hope of a savior. We are well past that hope. If we do not act, it is then that death will move to the forefront of our minds.