As no doubt the majority of human beings on this earth are now aware, Sarah Palin has officially endorsed Donald J. Trump for the Presidency of the United States — and what a sobering endorsement it was for those of us committed to rational, ordered liberty in the cause of self-government.

I’ve rarely, if ever, seen such a potent example of psychological projection. I could not help reflect that the effusive, cathartic outbursts by Palin on Trump’s behalf mirrored, in eerily similar ways, the same sort of non-rational ecstatic babblings of many of President Obama’s 2008 supporters (they seemed to be a bit less messianic in 2012).

Then it occurred to me: this was a confirmation of one of my earliest suspicions. This is exactly why Trump doesn’t do details. Like Obama, he’s put himself in a position where huge groups of people can project onto him whatever they want rather than coming to terms with what he actually is. His record? It doesn’t matter. His substantive policy ideas? Who cares. He makes people feel those sort of self-justifying feelings that all human beings fall for, the kind that blind us to reality, the kind psychologists put under the label of “confirmation bias,” where we see and hear only what we want to see and hear. He has actually enabled people to think that he is just like them.

One need go no further than Palin’s words about what Trump apparently stands for:

His power, his passion, it’s the fabric of America; and it’s woven by work ethic, and dreams, and drive, and faith in the Almighty. What a combination! Are you ready to share in that again Iowa?  Because that’s what’s going to let you make America great again!

As a conservative, my ears perk up whenever I hear anyone equate any single person with America or its values. It’s the sort of idolatry that messianism conservatives, of all people, should scorn — the amalgamation of a national leader’s personality with the nation itself does not have a particularly pleasant historical pedigree. But that is exactly what Palin has done, equating Trump’s “power” and “passion” with “the fabric of America.”

Is Palin advocating anything too extreme? No, not yet. But her identification of Trump with the nation itself gets far too close for comfort. It’s the same sort of twisted idolatry Obama’s supporters projected onto him, and we now know what happens when Americans think the man they are putting in the Oval Office was born in a manger.

And “faith in the Almighty”? True I guess. Trump has exhibited faith in the Almighty at least since July.

But she continues: “[Iowans are ready] to unify around the right issues, the issues important to me, or I wouldn’t be endorsing him! Pro-life, pro-2^nd Amendment, strict constitutionality. …”

Others have written extensively about Trump’s policy positions over the years, but suffice it to say that anyone who believes he has shown a consistent commitment to the right to life, the 2^nd Amendment, or anything remotely approaching “strict constitutionality” is out of touch with reality. Again, an explanation for this is that, like any projection, Palin is foisting onto Donald Trump her personal idea — she is confusing her own positions for those of Donald Trump, whom she has already personally identified with “the fabric of America,” and in the process has foregone any objective examination of Trump’s record.

Projection requires a sort of blindness to the details. As Dennis Prager recently opined, this is nothing but wish fulfillment, the hopelessly inadequate syllogism of: this is what I want, I want that person to do what I want, therefore he will do it.

Fear Not

Besides projection, there was also a spirit of fear in Palin’s endorsement. Yes, we have good reasons to fear for the future of our country. But fear is stifling. It hinders the mind with its own self-forged chains of passion, unable to control the distorting effects it unleashes. Fear is the stumbling block to action in the face of crisis, when action based on wise and virtuous principles is most necessary.

And fear is what has led good people to support horrible men, to fall for those whose great claim to loyalty is that they will “get things done.”

True conservatives, however, must be students of human nature and history, both of which teach us just how shallow such promises are, and that the disregarding of character, of wisdom, of knowledge, of virtue, is what has historically brought every people to their ruin, or to the brink of it.

There are few historical lessons as clear as those on the danger of “strong men” arising in times of crisis when the passions have so utterly overcome the reasoning powers of men. May we — those who claim to respect, love and learn from history — actually heed its lessons before history, in her unsparing wrath, decides the lesson needs to be re-taught.