“Willful Ignorance” Can Destroy A Nation
Slipping into the abyss of authoritarianism
Weeks ago while I was traveling north on Neil St., a beat-up white Ford van passed me and I caught a glimpse of some messaging crudely painted across the entire back of the van in large bold black lettering that looked like the helter-skelter manifesto of a pissed-off voter:
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“DEMOCRATS – WHEN YOU REALIZE EVERYTHING YOU BELIEVE IS A LIE!
SO SAD, AND… YOU MISSED.
THE BIGGEST ENEMY OF THE UNITED STATES IS THE DEMOCRAT CULT.
BIDEN VOTER?
YOU OWE REAL AMERICANS AN APOLOGY.
YEAH, YOU.
RIGHT NOW DEMOCRATS ARE DOING WHAT YOU THINK REPUBLICANS DO.
YEAH, YOU’RE A [ #1 FOOL ].”
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I changed lanes and came to a stop behind the van at a traffic light. I quickly took a picture with my iPhone of the message on the back of the van. The van took off when the light changed to green and I never saw it again or the driver.
This really disturbed me. When I got home, I stared at the picture for a while. How many other drivers read that message? Did they raise a fist in solidarity and honk? Or did they give the driver the finger? I’ll never know. But what I do know is our nation’s tribal nature is running hot these days. We love our tribes because they unite people who share their loyalty for a team or cause or religion or political party, and hopefully do some good work. But unfortunately, there is a dark side to tribes.
When tribes grow, their financial assets and social power and impact grow. And when that happens, tribes attract “Leaders” of all types – the good, the bad, and the ugly. The Leader at the top of the tribal pyramid can be a person with great moral character, honesty, empathy, unselfish, and a strategic vision that serves the Common Good for the road ahead. But tribes also attract charismatic personalities who arrive with an agenda to leverage the tribe’s resources for personal gain while miraculously staying out of jail.
We’ve all seen this happen so many times when tribes small to huge get hijacked by an opportunistic Leader with the gift of gab. When tribal members – aka, “true believers” – bond with the tribe based on a sheer faith in the Leader’s message in the absence of facts and truth, the Leader can exert extraordinary control over the tribe, approaching that of a cult. Some true believers see the Leader as “The Chosen One,” and their devotion is unshakeable. However, it is inevitable that some true believers start to see a pattern of darkening behavior in the Leader, but sadly, they turn a blind eye and say nothing.
The greatest danger of a devolving tribe is when a cunning Leader seeking more and more control over the tribe casts a “fog of willful ignorance” over the true believers. The Leader does this by:
instilling fear by threatening retaliation (like you’ve never seen before) upon anyone who attempts to challenge the Leader,
constant repetition of lies and disinformation on broadcast news and social media platforms controlled by the Leader, and
constant surveillance of true believers who also inform on each other.
This fog of willful ignorance can only happen when the true believers don’t recognize the truth about their Leader’s trending behavior towards the dark side; or, they do know the truth, but they are paralyzed by the fear that if they speak truth to power, they will suffer swift and painful retribution by the Leader. But no matter how much they feign ignorance of the truth, WE KNOW THEY KNOW.
Slipping into the abyss of authoritarianism happens slowly at first, with marginally increasing patterns of boldness, meanness, criminality, and craziness by the Leader which are normalized one shocking incident after another. In Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises, the character Mike is asked how he went bankrupt, and he replies, "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." Such is the disastrous fate of a tribe that gradually devolves inside its foggy fortress until suddenly, the tribe wakes up one day no longer in a land of the free, but with an oppressive Tyrant ruthlessly consolidating absolute power.
To the driver of the white van, I’ve certainly made many mistakes in character judgment in my lifetime, but I’ve tried to learn from those mistakes. My wish for us all is to never again be any politician’s “#1 fool.”
For the sake of our democracy, shouldn’t we clear the fog of willful ignorance and start speaking truth to power?