We humans love dichotomies. For example, when we meet someone, our brains tend to classify the person as masculine/feminine, taller/shorter, etc. 

Of course, false dichotomies abound. While a woman is either pregnant or not, a person can have both masculine and feminine traits. To wit: Republicans Pete Hegseth and George Santos are both men.

In Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the main character has a nice side and a mean side. While the story makes that a dichotomy, we can be both nice and mean at the same time. Likewise, we each behave wisely in some domains but toxically in others. 

Take me. In college, I made a C in what was supposed to be an easy math class. But in Practical Reasoning, on what was said to be the hardest comprehensive final exam on campus, I studied 17 hours and made a perfect 217/217. The next-highest score was 43 points lower. 

Brad Bull

Yet, despite my knowledge of reasoning skills, how toxically unhealthy was I to respond to a life crisis by diving headfirst into an Internet compulsion. The real problem wasn’t so much the content I was engaging so much as the oceanic hours I spent surfing to drown my pain in distraction. 

When it started, I sometimes stayed up all night and could barely function the next day in my job as a minister. I realized I had a problem when I was awakened by smashing my face into a tank-like computer monitor. Rubbing my nose and forehead, I saw it was 4:30 a.m. As soon as offices opened, I called a therapist.

I wish I could say therapy and ongoing church involvement immediately healed me. It didn’t. I relapsed for years. My behavior was both unhealthy and sinfully poor stewardship of precious life. As Proverbs 26:11 puts it: “Like a dog that returns to its vomit is a fool who reverts to his folly.” I was a preacher who kept returning to vomit.

Another preacher’s bold proclamation led Jesus to change his name to Peter — The Rock. Yet Peter’s courage wilted into cowardice, and he betrayed Jesus via lips that lied. Then, there’s Judas, deemed smart enough to be treasurer of Jesus Ministries Inc. But in exchange for money, Judas greedily betrayed Jesus via lips that kissed.

Chronic toxicity is insidious because we are too often unaware of just how unhealthy we’re being.

Clearly, smart people still do unhealthy things. Sometimes our toxicity is just a hiccup. Other times we find ourselves in a position outside our depth. But chronic toxicity is insidious because we are too often unaware of just how unhealthy we’re being. 

As with individuals, societies have collective intelligence and group-think stupidity. 

In the 1930s, thanks to literacy efforts dating back to Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation’s emphasis on people’s ability to read the Bible, Germany was arguably the most literate and well-educated population in the world. It also was one of the most highly Christian. 

To this day, biblical scholars study Greek using The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament by Gerhard Kittel. However, this highly intelligent, devout Christian enthusiastically and toxically joined the Nazi Party, believing it would restore Germany to a Christian moral foundation. In 1933, he called for stripping Jews of German citizenship and for expelling them from professions as doctors, lawyers, teachers and journalists. Smart man. Diabolically toxic man.

In 2024, a MAGA-supporting friend of mine said Trump was blowing smoke and, once president, would never actually do all the bellicose things he kept blathering about. The week I started writing this, I sent my friend a copy of Trump’s hostile Easter-morning greeting. I asked the person if they approved. I got a reply in which the person refused to read what Trump said and asked me to stop “badgering” them. Ignoring evidence and refusal to engage in discourse constitutes a symptom of civic illness.

Another super-intelligent MAGA-supporting friend said if America ever has more than even a small minority not rooted in Western Christianity, there will be chaos. The person’s failure to acknowledge non-Western Christian societies revealed the comment’s not-so-subtle racist roots. 

But the comment turned out to be right. Considering Republican, Democratic and third-party candidates, just under half the voters in the 2024 presidential election cast their ballots for our current administration. It is an administration not rooted in Christianity but in debased authoritarianism — which many compare to Nazism. Chaos has indeed ensued. 

The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee stands behind a crowd of hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the “alt-right” during the “Unite the Right” rally August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Va. After clashes with anti-fascist protesters and police the rally was declared an unlawful gathering and people were forced out of Emancipation Park, where a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee is slated to be removed. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

 I know MAGA supporters who are intelligent and genuinely good people in most ways. Thus, they are especially dismayed and angered by being equated with Nazis. I actually agree. 

It is unfair to equate MAGA supporters with Nazis. The Nazis were not surrounded by recent-history warning signs of fascism. The Germans were reeling economically from penalties imposed for starting World War I. 

None of these factors characterize modern America. We have the tragic example of Nazi Germany fresh in our collective memory. We are not reeling from a harshly punitive treaty. Yet MAGA supporters cheer for authoritarianism and ignore evidence of its abuse. That makes American authoritarianism far more inexcusable than that of German Nazis, who were merely selfish, racist and mean. 

With all the available history from which to learn, if you are promoting MAGAism — or ignoring it — it makes your behavior far more willfully unhealthy than that of any Nazi.

Social and emotional intelligence demands not being defensive but asking why our fellow citizens feel the way they do.

If you’re a MAGA supporter, do you feel angry about that assertion? Do you laugh in disgust? Those are awful feelings. What would help you feel secure enough not to tread on others the way you keep asking not to be tread upon? Social and emotional intelligence demands not being defensive but asking why our fellow citizens feel the way they do. 

Writer Jonathan Green prompted progressives to figure out the feelings driving support for Trump. He asked progressives to be empathetic, an act many MAGA leaders label as weak. What if, instead of being angry about being compared to Nazis, you show some concern that folks perceive you as behaving like Nazis and then seriously reflect on your behavior rather than passing it off as “Trump Derangement Syndrome”?

But hold on, progressives. If MAGA folks aren’t learning not to behave like Nazis, opponents of fascism haven’t learned how to prevent it. Sometimes, traditionalists’ radicalization is fed by the Left choosing questionable hills upon which to die — at least in the short-term. 

This is not to say we should not strive for solutions to social challenges — just that simplistic beliefs complicate issues, and simplistic efforts at solutions complicate them further. Anytime someone says, “That’s simple,” you can guarantee it’s not. We must courageously lean into the complexity of gender, sexuality, climate and people’s fear of change.

In his article, Green posed a fair challenge for taking constructive action rather than merely expressing outrage. However, he didn’t suggest specific actions. Achieving a “common language of hope” will only be attained by those willing to learn the language, and that requires acting in ways to create motivation for change. 

After years of sincerely trying to understand and build bridges with MAGA supporters, I’ve mostly failed — miserably. Some will say this piece is yet another example, because MAGA folks will take offense at being told their actions and inactions are more inexcusable than Nazis’. I was hurt when a family member said I was better at preaching what I believed than living it, but I sure needed to hear it. Jesus called the Pharisees vipers and whitewashed tombs, and we deserved it.

After I finished the first draft of this piece, I saw David Brooks’ essay “Why Do So Many People Think Trump is Good?” in The Atlantic. Brooks takes on both left and right regarding where we are in terms of moral commitment. 

Next, a friend sent me episode 151 of the podcast Philosophize This! Host Stephen West describes what social psychologist Erich Fromm discovered researching German society between World War I and II. Fromm found some people are particularly scared of freedom. They don’t trust their self-control and yearn for external control. Thus, they find others’ freedom threatening. Their way out is to sacrifice their own freedom to an autocrat in order to suppress the freedom of others. 

Erich Fromm (Wikipedia)

Fromm learned 10% of the population tends to authoritarianism. Fifteen percent want democracy. The catch was the 75% in the middle who are particularly susceptible to propaganda. 

West chillingly summarized Fromm’s thesis: “Democracy is not a guarantee that people are going to remain in possession of their freedom. People can be just as easily controlled by advertisements as they can by the sword.”

Gracious. To the extent we have had every advantage of warning through history, the luxury of time to contemplate it and economic prosperity eliminating the excuse of despair — we are a generation and people most despicable.

Repentance and following Christ’s example require expressing constructive moral outrage. Jesus confronted toxic religion while feeding the hungry and healing the sick. Many progressives — including this writer — are failing at doing these kinds of actions: Praying for enemies; graciously “feeding” the hungry person wearing a Trump button; repairing the storm-damaged home flying a MAGA flag; and offering an ICE member a “cup of water” in Jesus’ name. 

Constructive moral outrage requires standing for fairness for all — both the right of the transgender person to express themselves and the right of a cisgender female to compete on a level playing field. 

For traditionalist-leaning folks, this requires the humility to realize that which is not changing is dying. Change need not be so terrifying. 

For progressive-leaning folks, it requires courageously facing the reality that maybe surges in fascism cannot be prevented and all to be done is bear that cross. That means risking personal safety by facing an angry mob and saying: “‘You who are without sin, cast the first stone.’ But if you must stone or imprison someone, you must do so to me as well.” 

That is the foreboding but ultimately victorious legacy of Jesus, Paul, Mahatma, Rosa and Martin.

Brad Bull has served as a hospital chaplain, pastor, professor and therapist. He’s a freelance writer and political independent who has voted for both Republicans and Democrats and was appointed to a state regulatory board by a Republican governor. His therapy clients who have talked about politics have been from every imaginable party, ranging from a white male veteran who voted for Kanye West to a transgender person using NRA talking points to describe her love of guns and concealed carry. They worked together with him in hope and action against the common enemy of pain.

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