Rhinocerization

 It is a great irony that fanatical Trump and GOP supporters should choose—as their term of abuse for those they see as insufficiently zealous—the word: RINO ["Republican-in-Name-Only"]. Because it is really they, the loyalists, and not their adversaries, the waverers, who have been turned into rhinoceroses. 

I am referring of course to the process of transformation due to "rhinoceritis" laid out in Eugène Ionesco's 1959 absurdist drama, Rhinoceros. Here, the inhabitants of a French provincial town witness the arrival of one, or possibly two rhinoceroses on a Sunday morning. In the days that follow, they gradually succumb to the urge to become rhinoceroses themselves, until only our laggardly antihero, Berenger, is left standing on two feet. 

I knew going in that the play was generally seen as some sort of allegory for the rise of fascism, anti-Semitism, and other mass ideological pathologies. For the first two acts, however, the dialogue and characters were so unrelentingly zany that I found that interpretation a bit strained; if this can be made to symbolize fascism, I thought, what can't be? 

But then comes Act 3, and the drama takes on a more serious tone and even introduces an element of poignancy, as Berenger futilely pleads with his colleague Dudard to see the virtues of humanity and to resist the urge to go over to the side of the rhinos. 

Dudard begins the debate as a kind of Never-Trumper (or, shall we say, never-rhino) ("don't get the idea that I'm on the rhinoceroses' side," he says (Prouse translation throughout)) But as time goes on, he gradually reveals his hesitation. Ultimately he decides—as so many real-world Never Trumpers did—that he is too afraid to continue in his opposition, because his community might leave him behind. 

Here we encounter all the familiar arguments. Did any of you know any self-proclaimed "Never Trump" Republicans, during the 2016 election? I certainly did, and I swear they seemed to mean it, as earnestly as Dudard at first intends his opposition to the rhinoceroses. "Trump's not a real conservative," they would say. "He doesn't reflect real Republican values." One had no reason to doubt their sincerity. And they seemed to feel so strongly about it that one could not imagine them changing course. 

Then Trump was elected. Some of them even voted for him. But curiously, they didn't admit to having had a change of heart. They continued to try to put distance between themselves and those whom they saw as the real Trump supporters, the genuine, out-and-out rhinoceroses. 

"I'm not one of those MAGA people," they would say. "I find Trump personally distasteful." But one also began to hear a new line of argument from them. For the first time, they sounded a note of hesitancy. "Liberals exaggerate about him, though;" they would now add. "He's not as big of a problem as people think." 

But, we retorted, he said he was going to ban an entire religious group! He put out a public statement to that effect! We were told that was just colorful language. Trump didn't really mean it. We were instructed that we shouldn't take him so "literally." As Dudard says to Berenger: "I think you're right to a certain extent [...] But you go too far. You've no sense of humor, that's your trouble [....] You must learn to see the funny side of things."

And so began the great effort to convince liberals and the genuine "Never Trumpers" that it was they, rather than the erstwhile and fair-weather "Never Trumpers," who had lost touch with reality. The theory of the "Trump derangement syndrome" was born—an affliction from which liberals and Never Trump Republicans, all those who were unable or unwilling to accommodate themselves to the new order, were said to suffer. It was described as a constant tendency to exaggerate and catastrophize Trump's actions. 

The term "gaslighting" gets overused in our contemporary discourse, to be sure; but here I would posit was gaslighting in its textbook form: the effort to convince someone that their wholly accurate and fact-based concerns were in fact delusional and founded in nothing more than their own mental instability. 

But we were right to take Trump literally! we would say to our friends. Look, he just got into office and the very first thing he tried to do, the very first executive action, was to ban Muslims! We were told that we were losing our minds. That we were making mountains out of molehills. The goal posts shifted. Who cares if Trump tried to ban Muslims?, they now said. Why does that matter? Who wants Muslims anyways? 

As Dudard says to Berenger, in a tour-de-force of "Trump derangement syndrome"-style gaslighting: "You see the black side of everything—watch out, or you'll become a neurotic," and again, when he comes around to revealing that Berenger's boss at work has already become a rhinoceros: "I didn't want to tell you because I knew very well you wouldn't see the funny side, and it would upset you. You know how impressionable you are!"

As the villain in Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play Gas-Light—from which the term derives—is forever saying to the wife he is trying to manipulate: "Oh, dear, it's probably just your nerves; you know how you tend to imagine things."

Dudard, just like the erstwhile never Trumpers, seeks to minimize and relativize. Sure, Trump may be bad, they say. But isn't it incumbent on us to see where his supporters are coming from? Why neglect the beam in our own eye to focus only on the mote in one's neighbor's? Aren't other politicians just as bad in their own way? 

Dudard starts to sound a great deal like a J.D. Vance, who back then—you may recall—still claimed to himself reject Trump's demagogic appeals to racism, even as he pled for his readers to understand the sources of the man's appeal. "One must always make an effort to understand," says Dudard, "one has to start out favorably disposed—or at least, impartial; one has to keep an open mind [....] To understand is to justify."

J.D. Vance since then, of course, has gone back to delete the earlier public comments he made that were critical of Trump's policies toward immigrants and refugees. Because J.D. Vance is now seeking a Senate seat in the party that Trump controls. "We must move with the times!" as one of the characters says in Ionesco's play—just before becoming a rhinoceros. 

Dudard, likewise, is willing to remain a human so long as the rhinos are in the minority. But once almost everyone else has become one, he proves unable to resist. 

"[I]t's my duty to stick by my employers and my friends, through thick and thin," he says at last, shortly before rushing off to join the rhinoceroses. "I prefer the great universal family [....] I'm not going to abandon them. I won't abandon them." For Dudard, as for so many erstwhile Never Trumpers, party spirit eventually triumphed over principle. 

Of course that wasn't true of every single Never Trumper. A few remained loyal to their principles. They founded things like the Lincoln Project and The Bulwark. They decided never to give in to the allure of the MAGA rally and the Trump demagogy. But the price was exile from their own party. The GOP left them behind. Like Berenger, the "last man standing," they became the outcasts, the abnormal ones. 

As Beregener says, in his final monologue: "Now I'm a monster, just a monster. Now I'll never become a rhinoceros, never, never! [...] People who try to hang on to their individuality always come to a bad end." The price of choosing not to become a rhinoceros was to be labeled a RINO. It was to take on a life of opposition and struggle that not every person is willing to shoulder. It took courage. 

And so, let us celebrate the RINOs; for they are the only thing that stands between us and the rhinos.