There are, of course, many useful explanations for the Fascism that has overtaken the Republican Party. For me the most unsettling is in what follows below.
I am reading a book by an Israeli historian. The book was loaned to me by a friend. In it the historian quotes someone telling this story. Suppose you go up to a monkey who has a banana. You say to him, "If you give me that banana, I will give you ten bananas after you die and go to monkey heaven." The monkey won't trade, but a human might, and that's because of the cognitive revolution that took place about 70,000 years ago, some historians say.
In short, Homo sapiens acquired so much language that we could make up unfounded stories and then believe them. Hence, Don Trump, Fascism, unalienable human rights, and so on.
SAPIENS by Yuval Noah Harari
But what about our genetic foundation? Who gave us rights? Mother Nature? No one? (I will read on.)
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