Why is this happening? Put it among the 'unanswerable questions'

One essay

"I spent much of education perplexed about why Europe let Hitler rise. We discussed it in high school, college, and graduate school. The question was the great mystery of history, the desolate center of modernism, and — for a student in the humanities — the great test of one’s moral intelligence.

Then I graduated. But the mysteries didn’t. Briefly — first in Ireland and then after 9/11 — the enigma of terrorism seemed all-consuming. But now, of course, I, like you, spend my days puzzling over how America let Trump — and relatedly Putin and Netanyahu — rise.

Are all minds in every age stuck perseverating on unanswerable questions?"

— Can We Live With Not Knowing? Virginia Heffernan, Magic + Loss, July 17, 2024

Heffernan suggests that "to undertake the futile search for Truth is inevitably to become a Truther" — in other words, a conspiracy theorist. (She imagines her mentor Richard Rorty would have agreed.) The way to let go of conspiracy-theory level falsehoods is to say to yourself that it's OK not to know.

Another essay

Elad Nehorai says this, which I feel is related:

"Unless it is stopped, extremism gets more extreme. There is no such thing as static extremism. It is defined, in many ways, by its insatiable desire for more. More power. More control. More authority.
* * *
Every day, there is a new enemy. Every day, the enemy gets worse. So they must fight harder, grab more power, oppress more. This means giving more power to the authoritarian and giving up on their own choices and freedom in the process. But the leader provides a sense of meaning as well, a sense of destiny and hope. Because the promise is just on the horizon, and only he can get them there."
— Elad Nehorai, It's Time to Start Thinking About Your Safety: The fascists may be on the verge of winning their biggest battle yet. The time to protect yourself is now. July 17, 2024.

This means, Nehorai says, that "extremist takeover" doesn't end with Trump's reelection or the implementation of Project 2025. It's an "ongoing process." "Even Trump doesn’t know what he has made himself into, what he is. Even the Nazis didn’t know what they would become."

It won't end with seizing power institutionally. They will try to control our lives:

"The fall of Roe was just one of the early steps. It is not a coincidence that the some court that ruled to control women’s bodies also ruled that to be without a home is a criminal act."

Parallel

The parallel I see in these observations by these two writers: the desire for more. Some people want to follow conspiracy theories or follow authoritarians. The former seems like a desire for some piece of information to be all-explanatory. The latter is a desire for some person to be all-powerful.

It's important to seek good information and good governance. What makes these pursuits good, I suppose, is that we limit them, or they are somehow limited. In other words, what makes our desire good is that our desire is temperate, in the Greek philosophers' sense. Though it may or may not be politically centrist, it is "moderate" in the sense that we are lightly tethered to it. We can let go at times. We are aware we'll never reach the end, and we don't have to keep ramping up a panicked race to pretend that we're reaching the end.

My essays

"Why people believe in conspiracy theories" It's a 5-min read on Medium.

This novel imagines fascism in the 1930s USA. It's a 4-min read on Medium.