On one hand, displayed in our country is an amusing rabble of Trump enthusiasts who, when interviewed, make claims about their idol no sane person would utter, e.g., “He won the election, is still president, and is running the country from his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach.”

On the other hand, there are a vast number of local, state and national public officeholders, identifying themselves as Republicans, and presenting themselves as legislators engaged in work for the benefit of the people of the country. These individuals have largely broken with the tradition of coming to serve in a legislative body as a “Mr. Smith,” one whose life experience has fostered personal ideas of what sort of legislation would serve their community, state or country. These Republicans present no positive legislation.

In every legislative body there are leaders and followers. Here, all appear followers. Far more than at any time in our history, individuality has given way to a silent party-bonding that resembles a cult. Leading voices have come to express tradition-violating objectives that would serve the wealthy (who are their campaign benefactors) and unpopular political views (banning abortion). Re-orienting national priorities away from serving the public, they would do away with the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

They won’t likely be able to take such radical steps, but that the suggestion is made poses a warning about those who are making it. During four recent years the party’s leader, Donald Trump, allowed disrespect for women and white supremacy to surge — another warning of something afoot.

Trump’s rallying of supporters in Washington for an illegal effort to decertify an election he lost, a threat to lead an assault on the Capitol and take over the country — let’s face it — was an attempted coup. An electoral defeat by nearly 8 million votes was in process of being set aside by the man in command of our military forces.

Republicans have disputed this reading of events. We were seriously warned that our democracy was being threatened.

By contrast, consider for a moment the character displayed by respectable Republican legislators in the early 1970s, when a president of their own party proved, like Trump, to have committed crimes. They joined in forcing him out of office and into disgrace. These days, Trump is allowed to go on controlling these new Republicans.

Antisemitism is again promoted in the country, as is disregard for threats experienced by persons of color. That is what Republican obsession with the Mexican border is about.

There were 647 mass shootings in the United States last year, some taking the lives of little schoolchildren. The weapon of choice is a rapid-firing rifle. Gun violence came naturally and uniquely to this country. Quite apart from hunting, which has been practiced since ancient times, a constitutional amendment allowing slaveholders to have armed militias to control their slaves was demanded. The Second Amendment was the Founder’s answer to that demand. The Supreme Court has since expanded the right to have guns.

Pioneers used guns to take land from Native people. The process in which we came to be a country with more guns than people is our history. Democrats would ban military-style arms and counter this appalling history. Cultish Republicans blocking such change support the gun industry and gun culture. They display on their chests pins in the shape of assault rifles.

No one can deny, among the populace and those representing them in government, we are dealing with “a state of mind.” It is authoritarian, fearful of new ideas, fashions enemies to fear, and is white supremacist. This is a historical description of fascism, and we know well what carnage that marker brought with it — the Holocaust and more. A group in power, intolerant and of one mind, drew the common people into a crusade of murder, a process of destroying ethnic groups — Jews and slaves, but also others: homosexuals, gypsies, and people with disabilities.

A gathering of the powerful decided the fate of those they hated. A bureaucrat was put in charge of loading train cars with the unwanted, and they were hauled away to perish. The bureaucrat stood trial in Jerusalem and was hanged. Historian Hannah Arendt wrote that the man’s evil was banal, that he was simply doing the work of leaders very like this mindless set of Republicans.

Famed Karl Jaspers wrote, “That which has happened is a warning. To forget it is guilt. It was possible for this to happen and it remains possible for this to happen again, at any minute.”

Charlemont resident Carl Doerner is an author and historian currently editing his new work, “Breaking the Silence: Revisioning the American Narrative.”

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