Please, Don't be a Rhino

So, I had planned a short essay on the value of having a personal knowledge repository, whether that be a personal library and a series of notebooks or a homemade hitchhikers guide made with a Raspberry Pi and the entire contents of Wikipedia. The short version is to build yourself a wide personal knowledge base that is readily accessible and hard to take away. But sadly, I appear to have lost the draft, and a more pressing question came to mind.

Earlier today a family member posted, well shared, this video. And, if I hadn’t addressed the fearmongering in it I would probably be less irritated. One of my pet peeves is the use of fear to sell products. Sadly, this is the major rhetorical tool for a lot of groups: gun manufacturers, churches, and political parties (primarily one right now). This has less to do with my personal bias towards a positive message about what to be and against a negative one about what not to be. This has a lot to do with that fear and worry are the natural enemies of clear thoughts. We are probably at our most beast-like when we are afraid, and it is easy to take advantage of. No one is at their best when they are afraid that their identity or way of life is threatened and the group who wants to capitalize on that fear for profit or political gain deserves extra examination.

The constant fearmongering around the left, liberals, or communists is sad. At best, the worry about someone being a USSR-style party member communist is 35-plus years out of date. And absolute banger of a national anthem aside, it misses the point and nuance of the situation in the USSR while ignoring, or just outright smearing, the very real, very meaningful critique of this second Gilded Age in the US. This fear is to the benefit of the Christian Nationalists and the general MAGA movement because it delegitimizes their because narrative threat, human rights, and the modern democratic socialist movement. These are, by definition, center-left, moderate positions.

The fear that the video and, by extension, its whole culture plays off of, in addition to being out of date, also relies on a caricature of a political other whose primary goal is to ensure that everyone in the society has access to food, water, and housing. We believe this usually on the basis of human rights and dignity. If this sounds bad to you, why? Genuinely, because there are good reasons to question the methods of this, but I don’t think you can say it is a better world where everything is for profit and everyone is out only for themselves.

For the record, no leftist or liberal wants to sell your personal property to the government, or at least no meaningfully large contingent. Nevertheless, every time I see something like this, I am reminded of this quote from Anne Quinney’s book on Eugene Ionesco and his play The Rhinoceros.¹

“all around me men were metamorphosed into beasts, rhinoceros... You would run into an old friend, and all of sudden, right before your eyes, he would start to change. It was if his gloves had become paws, his shoes hoofs. You could no longer talk intelligently with him for he was not a rational human being.”

This obvious outs my own political preferences, if they were not out already with this play having a bit of a moment, but I first encountered it in a literature course while in college after which I quickly forgot it existed.

For those unfamiliar with the work, it follows the inhabitants of a small French town as they all are transformed into Rhinoceroses until only one remains and the town’s reactions to this new normal, which shouldn’t be treated as normal. The play is a response and criticism of the rise of Fascism and Nazism in the lead up to World War II and hits on the eternal themes of conformity, logic, mob mentality, morality, and mass movements.

I often make the excuse that many are merely products of their peer groups and their own lack of information sifting. Worse, I know that the internet and social media are basically The Mirror of Erised and feed people what they interact with.

But more than anything, I think Andrew Moss in his piece “A Play for Our Time” said it best:

“By reading or viewing ‘Rhinoceros’ today, one can see that the play is not so much about the horrors of fascism as it is about the vulnerability of people to its seductions. Some of the play’s characters, distracted by petty concerns, succumb out of sheer incomprehension of what is happening around them. Others are drawn to the energy and even beauty of the newly transmogrified beasts. Others surrender gratefully, welcoming a sense of belonging to what they see as ‘the great universal family.’”

I often fear watching people I know laugh at this like the advertisement above and similar things because I don’t know how far they will go. But, we have seen this before, and it turns out humanity can accept a lot before realizing it was all wrong to begin with.

So, please do not pick a side preying on your vulnerability and your need to belong. Pick a side offering to take care of all people, and then ensure that all people are cared for it is the only way to resist. We do not need to create a political other to attack and oust, or to quash. We fix things by love and by adding, not by fear and elimination.

And, don’t you become a rhino as well. If you find someone or something is appealing to your fears and worries, pause, and see if it is a paper tiger or just an outright lie to sell you on something.

1. Quinney, Anne (2007). "Excess and Identity: The Franco-Romanian Ionesco Combats Rhinoceritis". South Central Review. 24 (3): 36–52.