There’s apoplectic outrage among liberals that Donald Trump is clinging, to death, to his claim of massive fraud in Election-2020. Of course the claim is preposterous; but, why the consternation? Wild conspiracy theories without evidence are nothing new to America. Pundits may declare that the balkanization of reality, a growing trend under Trump, is exacerbating fissures in US society: that it is an existential threat to democracy. But such a view is flawed, for it views our tendency to cleave to alternate universes as a new phenomenon—an emergent ill caused by new media trends that enable people of like minds to form global cliques, shutting off rival groups, information-wise. There the pundits err!
When did human society ever agree on what is fact and what is opinion? Hysterical irrationality has plagued human existence through history, casting populations into camps that are at odds over facts and logic. Trump did not invent it. Generation after generation we feed children fairy tales presented as divine truth. Since those “truths” vary across time, locale, and creed, children grow up in different make-believe universes. At least, Trumpian politicians are adults who deceive only themselves; in contrast, our misinformed children are victims of our own making.
Thousands of religions have come and gone since ancient Sumerians memorialized their stories with cuneiform tablets in Mesopotamia. Each god was proclaimed the Only True God. Today disparate creeds create conflicting universes by dogmatically cleaving to alternate narratives. Who cares that deeds and powers attributed to a god are incompatible with natural phenomena? To believers, that incompatibility is the essence of deity—a god’s ways are mysterious, beyond human ken.
The most glaring case of factual fallacy in our world today—the proverbial elephant in the room—is that there is NO EVIDENCE IN HISTORY FOR A MAN NAMED “JESUS CHRIST.” (Muhammad of Islam, on the other hand, was a historically documented person.) The ONLY mention of a man, Jesus, in the chronicles of his time was provided by those people who identified themselves as his followers: Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John (writers of the Synoptic Gospels), Saul or Paul (his most famous cheerleader!). No objective scholar of the time mentions a Jesus!
But, our modern-day Christians would wonder, why should we expect historical records of a Jesus in those dim, distant days?
The answer is simple. Those “Jesus Years” claimed by Christians were not dim at all: they were in the middle of the turbulent Jewish Revolt against their Roman colonizers, a time when Judea was at the epicenter of the Roman World—with Herod as King of Israel and Pontius Pilate as the Roman Governor of Palestine. (Remember the Roman siege and heroic Jewish defense of Masada in 70-73 CE?) All of that is history, in the records. The fullest chronicle of that Jewish Revolt was written by the scholar Flavius Josephus, himself a Jew who took Roman citizenship (hence the “us” ending of his name).
But in addition to Josephus, there are the extant chronicles of Publius Cornelius Tacitus (56 CE–120 CE), one of the greatest Roman scholars, who was a young adult at the time when, Christians claim, a Jesus was crucified in Palestine. Tacitus’ major chronicles of the Roman world (Annales, and Historiae), were widely read before, during, and after the years of “Jesus.” And then, of course, there were the Plinys: Pliny The Elder (another famous Roman historian—who perished at Pompeii in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE) and his nephew Pliny The Younger, who wrote about the eruption of Vesuvius as well as about the Christians. So there were scholars galore during the purported “Jesus” years.
But what’s the importance of all those writers and scholars? Simply this:
If at that time in Palestine there was a man who walked on water, changed water into wine, raised the dead, and then himself died and rose from the dead to levitate to the sky, would we expect all those scholars to have been totally mum about it — without a word?
That’s hardly likely, unless one is proposing the greatest conspiracy theory of all time! But we find no definitive allusion to a real-life Jesus Christ!
To be sure, one of those scholars mentioned a “Jesus.” Josephus did so, but ONLY in the context of saying that Christians worshiped their Jesus as a god. Another one, Pliny The Younger, who was governor of Pontus and Bithynia in Asia Minor—the hotbed of early Christianity—mentioned that he was moved by the ardor of the Christians in his domain to pardon their idolatry (which he was expected to punish with death, in his capacity as governor).
Those who declaim Trump’s failure to provide even an iota of proof for his claims are surely aware that a lack of evidence has never deterred dogmatic claims of deity and miracle. Putting belief above fact did not start with Election-2020, Covid-19, or Climate Change; it’s the very bedrock of religions. Therefore, rejecting an election that you lost is no more outlandish than humanity’s propensity to pooh-pooh fact and science and instead embrace mythology and quackery. Polls keep showing that a substantial fraction of Americans—over 10% of young adults—disbelieve that humans ever landed on the Moon, even though it happened half a dozen times, to tumultuous, worldwide acclaim, and was broadcast on TV. But those doubters have no problem believing the fairy tales of their religion!
Well, however our fancy chooses to construe any god—clad in toga, robed, or with a wispy cloud to cloak his nakedness; smiling benignly or glowering balefully—he is only a creation of our minds. He may ride chariots of fire across the sky daily, belch lava from mountain bowels, roar his ire down before disdainfully pissing rain on us, or plant a rainbow in the sky; he may be a virgin-born man—never mind that virgin birth (aka parthenogenesis) cannot yield male offspring since it involves no Y chromosome! He may overcome death and levitate to “heaven.” No matter: he remains a figment of our overwrought imagination.
Nor is religion all that forges alternate universes among men. Racial categorization, a different kind of hysterical contention, has twisted the US society into pretzels. Race classification is based on no known taxonomic or genetic facts. Conceptual boundaries cannot even be drawn between races any more than you can tell at what moment night passes into daylight. Yet “race” has traumatized the USA like no other society, throughout its history going back 400 years. Racism is the engine that drives Trumpism. It is a black hole at the core of a sinister galaxy. Scholars have said ad-nauseam that race is a socio-political construct. Nevertheless, the notion of racial hierarchies perseveres and suffuses US demography, documentation, news, discourse, legislation, and even Constitution. Like religion and Trumpism, racism defies logic. It has riven the American populace into irreconcilable universes.
Trumpism is not a new paradigm but a rehash of our never-ending flight of fancy into realms of make-believe. In my lifetime the USA has spawned a few cults whose members were driven to frenzied mass suicide by end-of-time delusion: from the UFO-worshipping Heaven’s Gate to the wacko Branch Davidians of Waco, TX. Indeed, Trump and his “Proud Boys” are an amplified echo of David Koresh and his Branch Davidians: amplified by the super-steroids of political muscle and modern communication. And like the Davidians, Trumpites have shown themselves willing to burn down the house rather than leave it peacefully. Perhaps, some day dedicated followers will proclaim Donald Trump a “messiah”—a martyr persecuted by unworthy “pagans.” Deification of odd-ball “messiahs” is familiar to us: vide the Mormons’ Joseph Smith and Scientology’s Ron Hubbard. (One hesitates to go further back than that for fear of incurring the ire of fanatics!) Suffice it to observe that every religion and its messiah started with a cult built around an eccentric or controversial man who defied norms.
As an engineer I’m aware of the maxim that a problem well understood is half solved. It is perverse for us to accommodate the irrationalities of religion and celebrate the diversity between “races,” but then draw the line at politics by expecting conformity in the way we perceive “facts” in the news! Such conformity will elude us until we learn to interpret the world with only the tools of empirical science. Adamant belief, no matter how well-intentioned or sugar-coated, will only lead to recoiling universes of contradictions and contention. Trumpism may well portend things to come.
Linus Thomas-Ogbuji Cleveland, Ohio, November 2020