In an interview with RT International News, Lebanese-Canadian evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad stated that what is pushing America closer to a civil conflict is not Donald Trump’s legacy but the Democrats’ ideology-driven policy labeling the opposing camp as “domestic terrorists.”
Saad indicated that insinuating fear and anger in a society is not a sustainable reality, nor a sound political strategy. Promoting intolerance of any group within society for political or other reasons could end up in a disaster.
Gad Saad, also a professor in the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University in Montreal and the author of The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense, called for a healthy discussion instead of “hysteria.”
“Calling your next-door neighbor, who is a white male and who voted for Trump, a domestic terrorist is not going to result in any good downstream effects,” the professor told RT podcast hosted by Ben Swann.
“There are only two options: either we are going to resolve these issues peacefully through the battle of ideas, or, in 10, 15, 20, or 100 years, we will resolve them violently. Every day I fear we are heading down a violent path,” he noted.
Saad noted that he had witnessed a similar course of action back in Lebanon, where the Lebanese society was being torn apart due to sectarian mindsets and was eventually thrown into a 15-year-long multifaceted civil war, lasting from 1975 to 1990, and resulting in an estimated 120,000 fatalities.
“Lebanon was organized and continues to be organized along religious tribes. Everything in Lebanon is viewed through the prism of one’s religious identity and look what happened to Lebanon,” Saad explained.
Indeed, war happened back then, and today’s situation in Lebanon is critical because of that entrenched dysfunctional mindset, which is openly reflected by the ongoing crisis of the government formation.
The evolutionary expert is not far from the truth there. He makes a clear point.
Since the people’s uprising that started on October 17th, 2019, there have been several attempts to overturn it into a sectarian conflict that could have propelled the country into another war.
However, it was the fierce will of the people to remain united that has impeded it.
While the Lebanese people in their majority have come to understand and hence endorse the importance of national unity above political sectarianism and ideologies, it isn’t the same with the political leaders.
That’s the reason why Lebanon has been without a functioning government for almost six months now, despite the critical urgency for Lebanon to have a government that could save it from its continuous collapse.
According to Gad Saad, the Democrats in the U.S. are still acting as if they’re on the defense despite retaining the House and getting a majority in the Senate, as well as winning the White House.
Their ideology, he explained, might be the reason for such behavior. “The reason why the Democrats are not happy with having won all of the seats of power is because the existence of the other camp is an affront to them,” he said.
“It is not enough to win. You have to destroy the enemy. They should not exist,” the professor explained the basis of the winning side’s perspective.
He added that the Democrats and their supporters apparently believe that no “sane” person could support Trump and those that still do should literally be “deprogrammed” to see him as evil.
Saad, who had fled to Canada from the civil war in Lebanon, had some feelings to express on that matter. “That is dreadful, that is horrible, and for someone who comes from the Middle East, I am truly disheartened to see intelligentsia speaking in such reckless manners,” he said.
Now, according to him, the Democrats and at least the most prominent of their supporters believe there is no way of treating Trump supporters other than “pathologizing them.”
Instead, it is the Democrats who are in the thrall of “ideological parasites” or “idea pathogens,” Saad said.
Also a writer for ‘Psychology Today’, Saad believes it’s not the statements by former President Donald Trump or his legacy that is driving America towards greater disunity, but the “progressive” identity politics professed by the Democrats.
“Identity politics is by definition an opposite of unity, because it ghettoizes us into tribes, political, sexual orientation, or skin color ones. It is an opposite of a unifying message,” he pointed out.
