I used to believe that mass hypnosis was an impossibility in the sense that not enough people would be “tuned in” at the same time with the same intensity, but my skepticism has morphed into a kind of terror regarding the enormous number of Americans who have been mesmerized by the angry, fear-inducing rhetoric of the aggressively, terrifyingly threatening former president, Donald Trump, whose principal gift of speech is to turn a huge portion of Americans into maniacs, hell-bent upon avenging the political setbacks of their Svengali-like idol, who has miraculously made them believe that they are victims of Democrats and the current regime in Washington.
Trump’s extraordinary egomania has somehow connected their rage with his own disappointment in not being re-elected, which he connects in some moronic way with God’s will being ignored. Trump’s acidic accusations and playground rhetoric on some miasmic level of unmerited disgust in the brains of his gullible and furious flock is turning many of them into mindless avengers as though through some kind of Svengali hypnosis.
Make no mistake, Trump’s lust for power and absolute dictatorial control are being channeled into the weary, unhappy minds of those who believe (amazingly) that the power of dictatorship is somehow on their side for their rights and comfort. He has made them believe that the democratic channels of voting and hearing all sides of the rhetoric is a trick to steal their voting rights.
It’s time that more Americans open their history books again to understand the serious current echoes of all the dictators and other power mongers of the past and their very possible rebirth in psychotic charlatans like Donald J. Trump. I fear that the future could otherwise ring with the too-late words “If only we had seen the danger of all those lies.”
God bless America.
JB
About John
About John
John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes.
Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018
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