What is it about Donald Trump?What can this prancing, bombastic buffoon possibly have that resonates so perfectly with otherwise normal and reasonable Americans. We seem captivated by this man’s message, and even his ideological and political opponents don’t seem immune to his charm and charisma. What could possibly explain this? Again, it is not without historical precedent…

My cousin, Bolshie Bob, AKA Robert the Red, sent me this quote in a completely different context, but even in isolation it seems to explain much about the Trump phenomenon.

Let me cite one example of the acknowledged appeal of unreason. Carl Friedrich von Weizsaecker, a Nobel laureate in physics and a philosopher wrote to me in the mid-1980s saying that he had never believed in Nazi ideology, but that he had been tempted by the movement, which seemed to him then like “the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.” On reflection, he thought that National Socialism had been part of a process that the National Socialists themselves had not understood. He may well have been right. The Nazis did not realize that they were part of a historic process in which resentment against a disenchanted secular world found deliverance in the ecstatic escape of unreason.

Fritz Stern, “Lessons from German History” in Foreign Affairs, May-June, 2005.

Sterns original Foreign Affairs article is also reproduced
here. Its quite short, and well worth reading.

http://www.nytimes.com/cfr/international/20050501facomment_v84n3_stern.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

“Resentment against a disenchanted secular world.” Carl Friedrich just might have something there.