Dangerous Lies and Simplifications

This blog post started as a video. You can see it here.

This is about lies and simplifications.

I’ll use the phrase “the left” to refer to the parts of the population opposed to right-wing extremism.

Please forgive the shorthand. I could say, “Everyone to the left of right-wing extremism who wants to prevent another Trump-style authoritarian administration” — but that’s sort of a mouthful. So I’ll just say, ‘the left.’

A. Right-Wing Lies

Here is what people on the left seem to have a hard time accepting: The Republicans are knowingly and actively shielding and supporting liars and lawbreakers because they want to destroy.

Right-wing extremists don’t believe that the federal government put in place since the New Deal and civil rights movement is legitimate. They want to dismantle the federal government. The Republican Party has therefore embraced lawbreaking as a means to destroy.

Anti-government rhetoric has long been part of the Republican lexicon. For example, in 2001, Grover Norquist, who founded Americans for Tax Reform at the urging of President Reagan, said, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

For more on the Republican desire to destroy and dismantle the federal government, see my video on why Democrats Should Not Fight Like Republicans.

The insurrection is really just an extension of the idea that we should drown the federal government. That’s why the Republican Party is trying to minimize and downplay the insurrection.

Let’s divide the Republican base into a few groups.

Group 1: QAnon devotees who believe every crazy conspiracy theory they are told. Of course they believe Trump is the rightful president and the election was stolen from him and that Biden is illegitimate.
Group 2 knows these are lies, but they tolerate the lies because the lies are useful. This would include elected Republicans like Mitch McConnell, whose goal is to dismantle the federal government.
Group 3 are the single-issue Republican voters, who will always vote Republican because of a particular issue they feel passionate about. Many of them feel active dislike or even contempt for people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Trump himself. They probably wish the party was not so extreme and they possibly cringe when they hear the lies. But they’ll keep voting Republican.

In other words, the entire Republican base is immune to the truth.

These lies are destructive because democracy is the form of government based on rule of law, which requires truth and a shared factuality, or what social scientists call the “public sphere,” an area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action.

Because the Republican Party has abandoned truth, our only hope is for the left to embrace truth.

I’d like to talk about what we might call simplifications.

B. Simplifications

Simplifications take a complex situation and boil it down to something that seems true and perhaps has some truth in it, but is not true. It fits into a Tweet, it sounds persuasive, and these days the simplifications seem to have the effect of directing anger at Merrick Garland and the Democrats and leading people to conclude that there is no hope because the system is so corrupt.

Example #1:

By the way, notice the word “weak.” In a democracy, an attorney general should be meticulous, respectful of norms, ethical, backed up by the authority of law. Strong is for fascism.

Some prominent people are the left are even calling for Biden to fire Garland. This is the “Garland is doing nothing” meme.

I could list everything the DOJ has done since Garland was appointed in March, but that would be time-consuming and, I have discovered, doesn’t work.

Another way to counter these accusations is to ask:

If a president removes an AG because of a pressure campaign by political partisans who are demanding specific prosecutions, wouldn’t that itself be politicizing the DOJ, which is exactly what Attorney General Barr and Trump tried to do, which we all agreed was destructive to democracy?

In fact, for me, one of the most chilling moments during the Trump administration was when it was clear that Barr was doing Trump’s bidding.

The question in any form of government is: who makes prosecutorial decisions?

In an autocracy, the autocrat decides. That’s why, in autocracies, prosecutions are often used to go after political opponents. That’s why it was so dangerous when Barr did Trump’s bidding.

In an era of mob rule (lynchings), the mob decides.

As our democracy is designed, the prosecutor decides. The idea is prosecutorial independence or prosecutorial discretion. The DOJ has guidelines for prosecutors to follow.

Garland continually answers his critics by saying “We will follow the facts.” Ethically, that’s the most he can say. He is not supposed to (and shouldn’t) comment on ongoing investigations. (Also, “follow the facts” is what the DOJ is supposed to do.)

Think about what it would mean for the future of American democracy if prosecutions of political leaders have the appearance of being politically motivated?

That’s why the DOJ needs to ignore the noise and keep following the facts.

(Some of the urgency “this is taking too long!” comes from the idea that criminal prosecutions can end the threat of right-wing extremism. If you think that, it’s no wonder you’re impatient. If you think that, please see my video called “Criminal consequences and the threat of right-wing extremism.”)

Done right, prosecutions and investigations can help with the 2022 and 2024 elections.

But if rushed or bungled (for example, if juries return verdicts of not guilty) criminal proceedings could make things worse, which is why they must be done correctly.

Example #2

Some form of “if we don’t wake up to the dangers, we will lose it all.”

What does “wake up” even mean? Everyone I know on the left is fully aware of the dangers posed by the modern Republican party.

Example #3

I expect absolutely NOTHING to happen in time to save our democracy.

This is the “we are waiting for that Something to happen which will save us from right-wing extremism.” Some people are genuinely angry because they think they’ve been promised this something and it hasn’t materialized, usually because those lazy and cowardly Democrats are not doing that Thing That Will Save Democracy.

Spoiler: There is no such thing. Democracy depends on each person contributing. If you need ideas, I have a tab on my website called “Things To Do.”

Example #4

When I start listing the consequences (more than 700 people charged so far, Bannon indicted, investigations are ongoing) people say, “So? That doesn’t matter. What about [fill in the blank]?”

I’ve discovered that responding with truth doesn’t help because there’s a tsunami of these on Twitter. I feel like I’m playing Whack-A-Simplification. It’s exhausting.

Trump was impeached twice (a consequence). (“But so what,” people say. “He wasn’t removed from office.”)
Trump did everything possible to remain in office, but he was ousted. (“So what! That’s not a consequence.”)
Bannon was indicted, and this time he can’t be pardoned. (“So what! What took so long!“)

One problem is with expectations. People expect consequences to solve the problem of right-wing extremism.

Another problem is that the word “consequences” is so vague that the goalposts can easily be moved. In fact, I’ve watched the goalposts move so many times that I am persuaded that there will never be enough “consequences” for the people who say there are never any consequences.

I had an interesting conversation with Don Winslow on Twitter. Someone asked me this:

I said:

Don Winslow agreed that the charges (whatever they are) would not be enough.

If no consequences will ever be enough, then no matter what happens, people will continue shouting, “There are no consequences.” Anyone who points out the consequences thus far will be met with, “That’s not enough because . . . ”

I was feeling like I was drowning in a sea of “There are never any consequences” and “Merrick Garland is corrupt and not up to the job” when I listened to Yale Professor Timothy Snyder’s latest video:

What I call “simplifications” or “rage-inducing simplifications” he called Internet Triggers.

He said he can tell from an email whether the person writing to him has read a book or is repeating an Internet Trigger, which he defines as something the person saw on the Internet, felt triggered by, and is now repeating.

He talked about how dangerous these Internet Triggers are for democracy because they prevent us from thinking complex thoughts. People see these Triggers on the Internet because they are directed at them. The people are then transformed into repeaters of targeted memes. Snyder finds this terrifying because democracy depends on us having “some sense of time beyond our immediate outrage.”

Think about that phrase: A sense of time beyond our immediate outrage.

Snyder also talks about how, in Orwell’s 1984, the fictionalized totalitarian government worked on reducing the number of words in the language.

Having each of us become repeaters of Internet Triggers accomplishes the same thing by reducing our ability to have complex thoughts.

After mulling this over, it occurred to me that these Internet Triggers are putting Teflon on Trump, which means that the Left is putting Teflon on Trump.

Hear me out. . .

To begin with, phrases like “there are never any consequences” and “Trump gets away with everything” helps Trump by contributing to his strongman image. These folks LOVE when you say that that Trump is the strong man who gets away with everything:

Consider if, instead of harping on how there are never any consequences (which actually isn’t true) the left for example talked about the fact that the Trump Org has been indicted for fraud.

Have you noticed that nobody is talking about that? This account, asking “Where are Trump’s tax returns” seems not to know that Trump’s tax returns have been in the hands of prosecutors and the Trump Org has been indicted.

Notice that the tweet has more than 48,000 “likes.”

Consider what happened with “her emails” in 2016. The refrain was repeated so many times that it sank so deeply into the public consciousness that even people who knew there was no crime felt a nagging doubt.

Also consider what would have happened if the Clinton Foundation or any organization run by the Clintons had been indicted for fraud. We would have never heard the end of it.

But what happens when the Trump Organization is indicted for fraud?

The left actually minimizes it and downplays it by not talking about it and instead says “there are never any consequences.”

Maybe instead of creating and repeating simplifications or Internet Triggers, the left should focus on facts: