Watching history sadly repeat itself, I recently had the following scary thought: It wouldn't take a huge leap of my imagination to envision the Republican Party being willing to run Adolf Hitler as a presidential candidate if that would give them the power that they are so desperate to seize.
Scientific studies have apparently shown that the human brain operates on a negative bias in order to survive, so it's an easy political card to play to get the scared, angry masses stirred up: find and blame a scapegoat. Pretty obvious.
As a person without a college education who has made my living with my hands (now missing two fingers), I understand (to whatever degree I can) the need for someone to represent the common disenfranchised person in this country whose life and livelihood have been gutted by what I see as a capitalist system that lacks adult supervision.
Since the era seems to have passed when America has a John Wayne to believe in, yet still clings to the notion that we need a hero to save us, many have, out of desperation, chosen just that - a false god in Donald Trump.
History shows that people will choose a person who appears to be strong but is wrong over a person who appears weak but is right. Perhaps that comes from the same inability for an individual to choose the vulnerable path necessary to grieve and be honest about one's own internal pain.
We say to ourselves that "this hurts" and feel it instead of believing what we think of as our thoughts, when the stories our thoughts create are actually cultural programming spawned from the same negative got-to-survive thinking that leads to wars.
I wish that there were an honest hero that everyone could believe in in this country to unite us. Sadly, I can't see how they would gain traction. It appears that there's too much corporate power that would drive them into the ground.
T. Breeze Verdant
Williamsville
This letter to the editor was submitted to The Commons.