When I fled my first college to live and write in New York City, I took only one class at my new school, The New School For Social Research. The course was taught by the brilliant Hannah Arendt, a Holocaust refugee, and the world’s most prominent moral philosopher.

In just a few hours, she changed how I saw the world and the importance of seeking a moral life.

It was an amazing class, the only lectures I attended before dropping out of college to begin my career as a reporter. I couldn’t wait any longer to tell stories rather than hear them from others.

Like other admirers of her writing this past year, I thought of Arendt and her hands and teachings about totalitarianism.

How sad she wasn’t alive to write about Donald Trump and the chilling movement he helped create.

Her words and insights have been echoing in my mind all during the Trump years and especially during this latest impeachment trial, which turned out to be a stunning and somewhat horrifying lesson in how totalitarianism works, step by step, to corrode democracy, perhaps the most fragile form of government in the world.

Evil is banal, not spectacular, Arendt argued, it isn’t difficult to get very ordinary people to do great harm. The world is full of the gullible and the disenchanted.

I should say upfront that Germany and Italy in the 1930s were very different from America now. I am not one for Nazi comparisons to our times, but there are similarities, and they do need to be discussed.

We have a fierce and ingrained notion of freedom here; we are the only nation on the earthborn with the idea that all people are equal and free, even if they are not always free.

We are much more complex, and ungovernable population than Germany was. Kings and tyrants had been telling people what to do for centuries in European cultures.

We don’t like to be told what to do here.

I don’t think America will ever be conquered or dominated by any single political force; we are way too ornary and independent as a nation.

I don’t think the totalitarians here are out to slaughter people, just compassion and integrity, the two biggest obstacles they face.

I remember that Arendt spoke and wrote eloquently on the ease with which so-called “civilized” societies can slip and stumble at the hands of cynics and weak-minded citizens.

The Trump presidency was full of heart-sinking and disturbing moments, but I think the impeachment trial may have been the worst for me to deal with.

For some years now, anti-democratic political ideologies have been waging war on the politics of liberal democracy and respectability – the elements they call elitism.

They have drawn the almost total support of powerful corporations and a corporate culture that values nothing more than high profits, a powerless workforce, and a weak government that will leave them alone.

The totalitarian movement, in recent years the focus of the Republican Party,  has cynically and continuously attacked liberals, established politicians,  progressives, “socialists,” bipartisan representatives, academics, and scientists.

They have relentlessly weeded out dissenters, critics, and traditionalists, making it a cultural and political crime to disagree openly – the very heart of the democratic experiment. In Republican words, they have begun to “sensor” anyone who thinks independently.

Stalin and Hitler would have taken them out and shot them.

This demand for total obedience was the driving force behind every fascistic or totalitarian movement of the century.

The genius of the far right is that their vast and growing propaganda movement has turned the very meaning of patriotism upside down – treason is defending our democracy, patriotism is breaking it down.

The totalitarian movement has used mass propaganda to persuade a vast audience that the poor are to blame for being poor, that immigrants and refugees are a danger and drain on our resources, that government aid programs are a gift to the lazy and dishonest, that guns are an essential and absolutely protected element of democracy and that political opponents are evil, dangers to be thwarted and assaulted, distrusted and challenged at every turn.

If you don’t fight, said Trump, you will wake up to find your country gone. We nearly did wake up to see our country gone, but it was the loudest people with the giant flags doing the wrecking.

This is the same language, the same techniques the Nazis used to dehumanize Jews, gays, gypsies, Catholics, opposing politicians, and political critics. To get rid of people or defeat them, you have to dehumanize them.

Then you have to banish them from any power, or even better, lock ’em up.

The congress members – especially the liberal ones – were so dehumanized by January 6 that a horde of thugs thought it was moral and even legal to stalk and capture or kill them. One vowed to put a bullet in Nancy Pelosi’s head if they could find her.

Almost all of those arrested said they were surprised to learn what they were doing was a crime – wasn’t it what the President of the United States had asked them to do to save the country?

We all know what Trump was trying to do; we all know he was guilty. This is the era where truth does not matter, as many elitists understand it.

The question tormenting so many people are why doesn’t that matter any longer?

The answer is that just as Hannah Arendt observed, gullibility and cynicism are a toxic and dangerous mix.

Every totalitarian movement needs its Jews – or immigrants, dissenters, or elitists. It needs somebody to hate and fear.

Our new totalitarian movement has found theirs – anyone who supports liberal democracy. Anyone who believes scientists pays attention to journalists, respects established political leaders, immigrants, refugees, or anyone who understands the value of dissent or resent being lied to.

We saw the impact of this over the past week. We noticed that there was now an audience ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how false or even absurd, and which did not resent or object to being deceived because it held every statement on both sides to be a lie anyway.

This is now a mainstream and radical revision of the very idea of truth. This is perhaps the most significant thing we have to deal with. Would anyone think about a Secretary Of Truth?

It might well be the most important Cabinet Position.

Truth is not what we know to be accurate but what we wish to be true. That is perhaps Trump’s most destructive legacy; it will take an extraordinary leader and many other people to bring truth back.

“The totalitarian mass leaders,” Arendt wrote in  her landmark work The Origins of Totalitarianism, “based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”

In simple English, whatever works. Grievance is the Windex of lies, it just brushes them away as unimportant.

Just about everyone at the impeachment knows that the charges against Donald Trump were correct – he led and inspired an insurrection against the most sacred of all American political traditions – the peaceful transfer of power – yet the burgeoning propaganda arm he also inspired- defended him.

They suggested he didn’t mean it; the Democrats do the same thing, leftists, not the far right, plotted against the capitol.

The way the Republicans talk about liberals reminds me of the way the Nazi’s talked about Jews in pre-war Germany; those parallels are chillingly real, except it’s not the Jews they are after, thanks in part to Evangelical Christians who support Israel: the political left has been relentlessly de-humanized, denounced as generating (even as pedophiles) as elitist, socialist, communist liars and schemers who would literally destroy the nation if they take or are permitted to hold power.

Most often, Democrats are presented as a kind of wild animal, vicious, corrupt, and power-mad. Trump has been spouting this rhetoric every day for years now, and his congressional enablers have been nodding their heads – it should be no surprise it got into a lot of heads.

Totalitarian leaders and ideologues – the Republican Party has now earned itself this label – believe that the end justifies the means; this makes it easier for followers to accept the lie as a tactical move, even to support it – and to accept the next lie, and the thousands that come after it, and the ones after that.

Once you accept the idea that it’s okay for leaders to lie, says Arendt, you’ve taken the first big step towards a totalitarian government.

Mitch McConnell openly admits that Donald Trump was guilty as charged. He had no choice but to support him, he said, because he isn’t a sitting president.

How neat an escape hole that was.

What he didn’t say in his ground-breakingly hypocritical speech was that he was the one who made sure Trump was out of power when the impeachment trial began – he said he wouldn’t permit the Senate to start the trial, giving Trump enough time to leave the office.

Thus, the lie is a brilliant and successful tactical move – Trump was not found guilty. It’s not only fine; it’s admirable and patriotic. It worked.

Propaganda is different from the truth. Over time, the truth has proven to be a powerful political force. It was this year in America.

Being a hypocrite is no lie, it is just a matter of being crafty or being smart. Trump’s lives have horrified anyone raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

But to his followers and partners in the Republican Party, each lie is another example of how brave and determined, how savvy and strong he is.

Each lie is justified because it is aimed at the new Jews of the moment- the elitists and Democrats – who are so depraved and dangerous that stopping them is patriotic, not a seditious act. This is a world that doesn’t need opponents to keep them honest because they are not honest, to begin with.

Trump, and in this sense he is like Hitler, frequently called Democrats “monsters, enemies of the people.” Those words do have consequences, we also learned that on January 6.

Progressives are obsessed with wondering how people can accept all those lies and deceptions. But people aren’t “accepting” the lies; they are celebrating them. They are not a symptom or side effect; they are the point.

Trump’s defense team – closely coached by Republican Senators who support Donald Trump – assumed, as Trump always has, that their audience is both gullible and cynical.

They were right.

Here is what they were asked to accept and what almost all of them took: that contrary to the overwhelming legal opinion, Trump, a former president, shouldn’t be subject to impeachment proceedings, that he hadn’t meant to incite violence, and was, in fact, “horrified” by it; that he had no way of knowing his supporters had invaded the Capitol (even though he was recorded urging them to do it), that he had never said or meant to say that violence was what he wanted, or more simply, that any of this meant anything.

Trump didn’t invite the insurrection, they insist, but we all know he did – Mitch McConnell admitted that he did, he said it on live TV. Trump lost the election. Still, he really won it by a landslide, it wasn’t stolen, but it was, his supporters didn’t storm the capitol, Antifa did, as Trump told the House Republican Leader, Kevin McCarthy, over the phone.

This is more or less how carnival barkers take money from people; they talk so fast, lie so well and quickly, spin so many different stories that the truth is easy to drown out and impossible to find.

Leader McCarthy, who the mob could have killed, knows Trump didn’t lift a finger for hours to stop the riot because McCarthy was on the phone with the President begging him – shouting at him –  to intervene.

But he had no problems flying down to Mar-A-Largo to kiss the ass of the man who nearly killed a lot of innocent police officers and members of Congress. They did manage to kill six or seven.

Totalitarianism worships people – strong men and demag0gues usually – not constitutions and countries.

Arendt wrote that the qualities of gullibility and cynicism were present in different proportions in fascist countries depending on a person’s place in the hierarchy of the totalitarian movement.

A Senator is, by nature, more cynical than the broken but ideologically driven and accepting “patriots” who stormed the capitol. The first wave of interviews suggests that rank-and-file conspiracy theorists are, by definition, the most gullible of all.

Everything is possible in this world, and nothing has any real meaning. There is no truth to cling to, only the absence of both fact and mercy.

“There is no question, none – that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” said Mitch McConnell on the floor of the U.S. Senate. “No question about it.”

This was cynicism as its most tortured and brilliant best. There is no question that Trump is guilty, but let’s not risk any Republican politicians by finding him guilty and facing his supporters’ wrath. Let’s hide behind a bureaucratic procedural rationale that politicians call “giving cover.”

This was McConnell’s gift to his senators; they get to go home and tell their followers that they supported their leader, even though he was guilty. Tsk-tsk, you know how Trump is.

And being guilty seems to be no problem for Trump’s supporters.

I’m not yet ready for the hand-wringing I read and hear so much about. It is easy to forget that we are not Germany in the 1920s and ’30s. We have a rich tradition of democracy and an entrenched civic and judicial structure and bureaucracy.

Trump was defeated, not re-elected.

Every single court stood up for democracy; not one turned against it. There are many totalitarian flunkies in different states worldwide; they are politicians. They do what politicians do to put their fingers up to the wind and follow the breeze.

That is very different from the world of Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini.  Trump is no Hitler.  He is not nearly as smart or efficient. But the lessons about totalitarianism are important, as is dehumanizing and demonizing of opponents.

One of the great dangers of people like Trump is that they use their feral instincts to gain support, but they often fail to grasp the importance of what they are doing.

There is little doubt he instigated the insurrection, but I’m at all sure that he knew what he was doing. He usually doesn’t/

Germany was never as diverse as America is. Women never had as much power as women are gaining; people of color were never as numerous, connected, and organized as Black Lives matter is now. There were never so many yellow and brown people.

The Nazis never faced intense and wealthy and culturally save urban centers as Trump did and his successors will.

And we have a Democratic President with considerable power. Biden will almost certainly bring the pandemic to the ground and lift the economy.

This will not crush the totalitarian impulses, nor will it change their ideas about truth and facts. Prosperity might do that, or time, or the rise of charismatic leaders who can inspire people in a different direction.

The week left me angry, tired, and a bit sad.

But I am far from hopeless, as this year also demonstrated. Freedom is worth fighting for. This year I learned that many millions of people are willing to fight for it.