Fear and loathing
I used to wonder how Nazism took hold. Learning about it in school forty years after the end of World War II, I couldn't fathom how people could do such things to each other. I now know it comes down to fear. We can get smothered in fear and then wear it like bravado to make us into proud monsters, striking at imagined enemies and each other. Fear is the easy path, compared to the thorny way of reason. It’s easy to surrender to fear and make bold cowards of us all, cringing behind whomever has the loudest, angriest voice. We let the anger seep into us and fill our thoughts, because it becomes too difficult to puzzle out the answers on our own. It turns vigilance into paranoia. It makes good people commit murders, wars and genocides… and wonder for generations how we could do such horrible things to each other. This all comes to mind because of Facebook, of all places. Several people I know are rather hardcore conservatives who have been enamored with Donald Trump and