Oh, Arthur, You're Just Crazy!

So said many people in response to this. I answered some of their objections here, particularly in the Update.

Yeah, I'm completely nuts. After all, it's not as if we're talking about a charismatic leader who addresses many tens of thousands of adoring followers in a huge stadium. It's not as if those followers' worshipful dedication to their chosen leader causes them to fall into a trance devoid of all capacity to examine the nature of their leader and his program in a dispassionate, objective manner. It's not as if we'll be treated to the sights and sounds of tens of thousands of followers cheering and screaming, so that the followers become molded into a single overwhelming mass of humanity, or that the spectacle and mind-obliterating sound will destroy the capacity of thought itself.

It's certainly not as if the charismatic leader is in love with the massive powers of an authoritarian-surveillance state and seeks more and more executive power. It's not as if the leader embraces a foreign policy of repeated aggressive, non-defensive war against nations that do not threaten us. It's not as if the leader promises fundamental, all-embracing transformation or that he claims to be ""changing the very nature of politics," all supposedly by means of peaceful revolution.

Well, it's not exactly like any of that. Do note the picture.

I'm just crazy. Besides, and despite the very large number of essays I've written examining the uniquely monumental evil of racism, many now claim that I'm also a racist.

Obviously, you shouldn't listen to a word I say.