Reading this meticulously researched and cited piece of scholarship, I was struck by how much time lawyers had to spend debunking this lie. I personally spent hours. I didn’t want to. I tried to avoid responding, but too many of my long-time followers were in a panic.
Notice the power (and advantage) a liar has. A liar can force us to spend days explaining why the lie isn’t true. It’s a time and energy drain.
The liar literally hijacks our time. The liar hijacks the national conversation. We’re puppets and the liar pulls our strings.
We are able to recognize the threat Trump poses to truth and democracy, but we don’t have the tools to withstand the mind control tactics.
Totalitarianism, after all, is when the government controls your mind.
Fabulous quotation. The overlap is easy to see. Racism is based on a lie, which generates more lies. Fascism (the leadership principle) is based on myth: A strongman embodies the mystic destiny of the nation, and his instincts are superior to the elites. To maintain his position as a strongman, the would-be autocrat has to lie constantly.
This particular lie (that Trump can fix the election via state legislators who can redirect the electoral votes) served Trump in multiple ways. I’ve talked about how this particular lie transformed Trump from a loser in the polls to an untoppable strongman who can fix an election.
People are still stuck on this, and still insisting that we find ways to guard ourselves against this (practically) nonexistent threat. Meanwhile, we’re not talking about his failures. We’re not talking about the NYT reports about his taxes. Win for Trump.
Check out what Russian television is saying:
Russian state-run television is saying that Trump lost the debate but a corrupt Supreme Court will keep him in power.
Yale professor Timothy Snyder explains exactly what Putin is up to with this kind of propaganda. Putin tells Russians: Yes, your government is corrupt but ALL governments are corrupt. He tells them that Western “democracies” pretend to be democracies, but they are not. They, too, are corrupt.
Putin can’t make Russia like the west, so he seeks to make the west like Russia. The way Russia destroys democracy is by getting people to lose confidence in democratic processes.
Destroying democracy with a Pinochet-style military coup is very 20th century. Twenty-first-century would-be autocrats have a less bloody, and less dramatic method: They control your mind through propaganda.
You can see the interplay between Russian propaganda methods and the fear created by the state elector lie (which also relies on the idea that the Supreme Court will throw the election to Trump.) These techniques are very, very effective.
I am persuaded that the most important moment of the debate was when the candidates were asked about the transition of power after the election. Biden looked at the camera, told the audience to vote, assured everyone that their votes will count, and if Trump loses he will go:
Trump responded with one of the most unhinged monologues I’ve ever heard:
In this monologue are complaints that there had not been a peaceful transition when Trump won, rantings about Hillary and an attempted coup, predictions that there will be “fraud like you’ve never seen.”
It’s clear that once more Trump’s interests and Russia’s interests align. Both have a stake in persuading people that American democracy is a fiction. Both want to persuade people that democracy doesn’t work and it can’t work..
Who won the debate? It seems to me that if voters believe Biden—if they believe their votes will count and the people will pick the next president—Trump lost and democracy wins. Any “win” that Trump squeaks out will be the extent to which he persuades people that the election will be a disaster.
Will Trump concede? I assume he will not and we’ll be in for a rough ride, but I don’t have a crystal ball. This could go any number of ways. It’s just as possible that after he loses, he will just dissolve into a puddle. He doesn’t seem well.
He could also make lots of trouble. There, however, are ways we can minimize the danger he poses. We can learn better how to confront a would-be autocrat. This will make it easier to get through the next few months. And when someone comes along who can do the Trump act better, we’ll be better equipped to handle it.
