I so want to ignore Trump, but cannot. His name comes up every day. He's the car wreck you can't look away from.
Yesterday, at the America First Policy Institute Summit in Washington, he outlined his authoritarian vision of his next presidential term.
It was the speech of a crackpot through and through.
And scary as hell.
Yes, Trump is an unlettered buffoon, but he has his certain appeal.
It's the appeal of the reluctant savior, the hero and patriot whose hour has come.
In March 1940, George Orwell reviewed the first English translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf, overlooking the book and reflecting instead on Hitler's charm.
"Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality," Orwell wrote.
While der Führer promotes a "monstrous vision," "the fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him." Perhaps it's his face, Orwell suggested.
"It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs," he wrote. "In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself."
Hitler harbors a personal grievance of unknown origin, Orwell said. His impulse is to avenge himself.
"He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can't win, and yet that he somehow deserves to."
But charm alone isn't Hitler's secret weapon, Orwell wrote. He also knows that all aggrieved people crave vengeance.
"Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don't only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also want struggle and self-sacrifice. Hitler has said, 'I offer you struggle, danger and death,' and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet."
The similarities to Trump are unnerving.
We all don't fling ourselves at his feet, thank goodness, but millions of Americans worship him.
It's that undeniable charm—and the craving for vengeance—that explain Trump’s attraction.
