Doug Collins says that Democrats are in love with terrorists.
Mark Levin says Democrats hate America.
Mitch McConnell says he wants to enact the Clinton Senate trial rules.
They know these are lies. Spoiler: They’re trying to destroy.
The “again” in MAGA signifies reactionist politics (as opposed to conservative politics) Reactionaries want to take us backwards. To do that, they need to dismantle and destroy. (For more on Conservatives v. Reactionaries, click here.)
In particular, Trump wants to take us back to a time before the Civil Rights movement, before laws against insider trading, before the New Deal and federal agencies that regulate the commerce of plutocrats.
It was a time of almost unbounded personal liberty— for white men.
What is standing in the way of returning to the Good Old Days? All those laws and regulatory agencies that stop white men from doing whatever they please. (Like the FBI!)
Aside: Reactionaries loved law enforcement when the main purpose of law enforcement was to put black men in jail. But when the FBI started looking at the crimes of rich white men? Watch out!!
When Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Trump’s lies by arguing that his false statements actually point to something true, she offered an explanation for why Trump supporters embrace transparent lies.
“President Obama was born in Africa,” for example, is a provable lie, but it points toward what to Trump’s supporters see as a deeper truth: President Obama is black, and therefore, isn’t really a real American. (Remember Sarah Palin’s comment about “real” Americans?)
“Democrats love terrorists” points to what Collins sees as a deeper truth: Democrats like [don’t hate] brown-skinned people from the middle east.
“Democrats hate America” makes sense in the context of Sarah Palin’s comment about “real” Americans.
“Real Americans” are small town or rural and white. Hahl, Kim, and Sivan, in “The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue,” explain that those who want to destroy the “political establishment” embrace a liar because they know the lies destroy.
Lest you think the Republican liars are unaware that they are lying, Steve Bannon openly explains the tactic: “Flood the zone with shit.” If this sounds to you like standard fascist propaganda. . . you’re right! It is. Same thing.
Hofstadter explains the same dynamic in his classic book. Hofstadter conducted a thorough review of American politics from before the founding of the nation through McCarthyism and noticed a pattern among a small impassioned minority on the fringes of the political spectrum.
He called their behavior the “paranoid style” in politics. Those embracing the paranoid style of politics believe that unseen satanic forces are trying to destroy something larger in which they belong. They “feel dispossessed.” They are “determined to repossess it and prevent the final act of subversion.” They therefore adopt extreme measures. They will stop at nothing to prevent what they see as an impending calamity.
Lying is just one of the tricks in their bag of tricks. Lying and cheating. Here’s the thing to remember about these lies: They’re trying to send you into a spin. They’re trying to frustrate you. Liars have an advantage. They can reel off dozens in a short time. Responding to each takes time. You can spend all day playing whack a lie.
The antidote to the “Firehose of Falsehoods” method is to put raincoats on the population so the lies just roll off. We shrug and say, “There they go again. Lying. Pay no attention.” The public sphere remains intact.
A landslide in 2020 will help send them back to the fringes where they belong. They’ll never go away. We’ll always have the paranoid element trying to destroy. We will need better ways of dealing with them in the future, but first things first.
Same way it happened in 2018 and 2019. Democrats won in 2018 by 8 points. 10 points is a landslide.
I’ll remind you of something important: One goal of active measures is to cause people to lose confidence in democratic systems Cynicism—which leads to nihilism—will kill democracy faster than hackers.
If you read MAGA tweets with “cynicism” in mind, you can see that the MAGA mindset drips with cynicism.
There is no situation that we can’t get out of. My husband and his family experienced the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. They also experienced the transition back to a functioning democracy. Was it easy? No. But people did the work.
Short answer: The[cult]leader signals the lies, and others fall in line. Michael Cohen explained how this works in his testimony before Congress.
While Cohen was negotiating with Russia on Trump’s behalf (to build Trump Tower Moscow), Trump often asked how the negotiations were going. Other times Trump looked Cohen in the eye and say, “there’s no business in Russia.”
Afterward Trump went out and told the same lie to the American people. Cohen thus understood “’there’s no business in Russia’ was the lie he was supposed to tell.”
McCabe tells a similar story. After Trump fired Comey, Trump summoned McCabe to a meeting. Trump offered a “gleeful” description of what happened with the firing of Comey. McCabe knew this wasn’t true. He also knew Trump expected him to “adopt” this falsehood. McCabe refused. He said, “No sir. That’s not true . . . ”
He knew that he’d “given him the wrong answer.” He also knew he would lose his job because of his unwillingness to tell the lie that Trump wanted him to tell.
People first lie for Trump by their silence. Then Trump draws them in until they’re complicit.
Others, like Sarah Huckabee, appear to willingly and eagerly embrace the lies.
