Fads, Follies, and Delusions --welcome to 2025

When I was a kid—this memory is decidedly before entering high school—at one of my favorite haunts, the book store, I picked up for half-price a coffee table book titled: Fads, Follies, and Delusions of the American People by Paul Sann (1967). The chapters explored everything from the hula hoop to Father Divine in Harlem to the rise of Mussolini. You see I was fascinated by how something becomes a thing and then a few years later is nothing. At the time I was also engrossed in reading the Bible cover to cover. There was something very Ecclesiastes about popularity—here today, gone tomorrow, or to borrow the language: “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” Isaiah 40:8. Even then, I was looking for the key to life.

I spent countless hours trying to figure out how a whole nation, Germany, could fall into the hands of the devil Hitler and exterminate over 6 million Jews. It was a lot for a kid to think about.

Every day now in the MAGA universe, which is not only a US phenomenon but seeping into worldwide politics and popular view, I am confronted with surreal historical/sociological comparisons—all ending with ism, Fascism, McCarthyism, Racism for example.

The compulsive need to bring back coal, slander Obama, force sports teams to go revert to names with negative connotations, suggesting a police officer convicted in the Breonna Taylor case be sentenced to only a day in prison, trying to influence the former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro trial. All these positions in my opinion seem to be on the wrong side of the news/history. A bit like saying at the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, White-Nationalist Protesters: ‘Some Very Fine People on Both Sides’.

I struggle daily with how all this is going to play out: This country’s love affair with MAGA, Christians embrace of Trump. I try to tell myself: This story isn’t over yet.

Just like in that book, Fads, Follies, and Delusions of the American People, seen in the rearview mirror, the fads seem unreasonable, crazy, unlikely: How could the American public be so stupid? Not everyone, mind you, but a good number grabbed onto, was enamored by, pulled under the spell, bought into whatever was being sold at the time, either by news media, advertising, or other waves of populism. Sometimes fear. If someone’s neighbors were all in for Hitler then the safe bet was to go along too. Or at least pretend.

Especially if you had nothing to lose ie weren’t a Jew or intellectual whose reputation/career was at stake.

I’m hoping there comes a tipping point, like with the McCarthy senate hearings, where “have you no decency” speeches can cause even the most emotional believer to suddenly stop and think about What Is Actually Going On. On the surface it appears patriotic, in support of the American way, but below the surface it is about power and fear tactics and subverting civil rights. I wish I could predict the future.

Institutions like colleges and universities, the fourth estate of journalism, various governmental oversight bodies have all been weakened. Who is going to push back?

Maybe this Epstein File thing has legs . . .

Either way—will it go away like some fads in the past because it naturally spun itself out, was exposed as a hoax, or will there have to be some violent overthrow? Remember: It took a world war to defeat Hitler, bring down Mussolini. I pray not the latter.