Part I is here. Recall:
Where we left off: The hierarchical leaders who want the freedom to lie and steal and cheat have a problem: Persuading their victims to vote for them.
One way the GOP gets votes is by nurturing and stoking racial grievances. They get certain people to vote against their economic interests by offering something they want more: Putting minorities in their places.
Max Boot, in Corrosion of Conservatism, explains how he came to understand:
(Notice the hierarchical thinking)
In Part I, I mentioned that Blacks were left out of the post WWII prosperity. Stoking racial resentment took a new form after the Supreme Court Case, Brown v. Board of Education (1955), the case ruling racial segregation in schools unconstitutional. Brown v. Board kicked off the modern Civil Rights movement, which then gave rise to the women’s rights movement. When African Americans were finally able to move into mainstream American life, the “free market economy” people seized on a way to get the white supremacists on their side. (Previously, white supremacists like the KKK had been in the Democratic Party, and “free market economy” folks were Republicans.)
The “Free Market” folks learned not to say, “We dislike Brown v. Board of Education because we like segregation. People called them racists and they didn’t like that. So they said, “The federal government overreached, first with ‘activist’ federal judges and then Civil Rights regulations.”
They argued that Brown and Civil Rights legislation violated states’s rights and personal liberty. Thus Brown v. Board allowed “free market” folks to lure the white supremacists into voting for them by setting up a situation where they were all on the same side against “big government.” (Recall from Part I that the “free market” people dislike big government when it issues regulations that prevent them from cheating.)
Yale prof. Timothy Snyder offers another way of understanding how would-be oligarchs get people to vote for policies that hurt them. He calls it Sadopopulism. The formula is simple:
- Create pain and suffering
- Profit from the pain and suffering
- Blame the pain and suffering on “enemies”
- Promise to defeat the “enemies”
What helps make this possible is conditioning a large base of voters to believe any lie they’re told.
I think we can divide the Trump-FOX-GOP into two groups:
- Those who know they are being fed lies and accept them willingly and knowingly, and
- those who are totally duped.
I don’t think any of my readers will quibble with the fact that Fox lies to its viewers, but I’ll go ahead and offer one notable example: The ACA Death Panels thing, dubbed the Lie of the Year. Notice how the lie helps persuade people to vote for a policy (no health care) that can kill them.
Under Reagan, the GOP repealed the Fairness Doctrine, which required news outlets to give balanced coverage of all issues. Republicans claimed it violated their free speech rights. It didn’t. Nobody has the right to tell harmful lies. (I’ll deal with that in more depth in another thread.)
Abolishing the Fairness Doctrine paved the way for Fox’s fear tactics. See, for example, The Brainwashing of my Dad.
The right wing has been debunking science and denigrating universities for decades, while nurturing conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones.
Of course the GOP debunks science. Many of them profit from hydrocarbons. The last thing they want is for the masses to listen to scientists and start believing in global warming. They don’t care if global warming kills people. There are profits to be earned.
There are fewer people in the “duped” group than you might think. Most of Trump’s base knows he is lying but they fall in line anyway. You can spot them because they say cynical things like “He’s a liar, but ALL politicians lie.”
No sooner had I written those words on Twitter when an amusing thing happened. A Twitter account with #MAGA in the profile dropped this comment, proving my point:
There you go. Pure cynicism. All politicians lie, which raises the question: If you know Trump lies, why do you vote for him?
Some Trump supporters embrace the lies because they enjoy socking it to their enemies (Democrats, minority communities, liberals, immigrants).
Some want to destroy and they know the lies destroy. If you missed it, see my 2018 Slate Article, “Why Trump Supporters Believe Any Lie He Tells.”
Right wing media succeeded in building an audience that will accept anything they say and reject as false anything that comes from “mainstream media.” For some Republican strategists, lying from the 1980s through 2015 was a fun game. They could win elections! How awesome!
They knew they were lying. Joe Walsh knew Obama was born in Hawaii. But it was great! They could trounce the liberals! They could seize power! They could win!
What some of them (those who are now sorry) didn’t realize was that they created the circumstances that allow for totalitarianism and demagoguery. All Trump did, in 2015, was grab the levers of a truth-stomping machine that the GOP had spent decades building.
Instead of “believe Fox” or “believe the Republicans” Trump said, “Believe me. I am the arbiter of truth and facts.” Trump goes straight to the Fox viewers, bypassing Fox.
Trump controls the Fox viewership (Trump’s “base”) which means he controls Fox.
Because the Fox viewership is also the Republican “base,” it also means he controls any GOP elected officials who need the Fox viewership to get elected.
So Trump has set himself up as the Leader, the arbiter of truth, and the entire Fox-Trump-GOP has fallen in line.
Trump is a natural in this role because he’s been lying all his life. Two lies, birtherism and “I am a successful businessman,” launched him into politics. Trump doesn’t inhabit the world of facts. He creates his own narrative and forces people into his reality.
Trump didn’t just seize the levers of a truth-stomping machine. He also seized control of a party that, for decades, has implemented Death Policies. (See Part I)
When the pandemic hit, Trump had no way to deal with it. He doesn’t know how. He rejects science and experts. He hires only people who will accept the reality that he dictates.
This brings us to the third strand: The Leader Decides People Must die.
This post is getting long, so I will wrap it up in a separate post, Republican Death Panels, Part III.
Keep reading here.
