This blog post started as a 12-minute video. If you prefer to listen (or you want to see my pretty green and gold office) you can see it here.
A few examples of increasingly outrageous lies from the past week: Republican Congressman Andrew Clyde, in talking about what happened at the Capitol on January 6th, said, “to call it an insurrection, in my opinion, is a bald-faced lie.” He went on to say that “If you didn’t know the footage was from January 6, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.” On Friday, Texas Representative Louie Gohmert said there was “no evidence of an armed insurrection,” said no firearms had been confiscated (which is completely untrue).
To give you one more example of a crazy lie: Sen. Rand Paul and Tucker Carlson, Fox News host, implied that Dr. Fauci is responsible for the outbreak of Covid.
You can see the degree to which people in the right-wing information universe are given reason to doubt basic, provable facts.
I’ve talked a little bit about why people like Tucker Carlson and Senator Rand Paul and Congressman Andrew Clyde or others tell these kinds of lies. A few weeks ago, in Fascist Lies, I quoted Frederick Finchelstein who explains that the liars often understand that the lies are not literally true, but they believe their lies are in service to a higher truth. This is a “the ends justifies the means” argument. If telling a lie achieves the result we need, we justify the lie. He also talks about how the lie can shape reality.
What’s startling from the polling is how many people believe these lies. We can see how many are willingly going along with the lies.
One of my followers on Twitter asked me this:
Why do people prefer myth? I just do not understand the mass appeal.
One part of it is that the lies destroy and they want to destroy. The lies sock it to their enemies and they want to sock it to their enemies.
Before I get to the ugly stuff about how lies can destroy democracy, it’s worth pausing to say that myths are not always harmful or destructive. For example, when dealing with a six-year-old and a loose tooth, the myth of the Tooth Fairy comes in handy.
Psychologist Carl Jung talks a lot about myths and how they serve an important psychological function. I don’t think a Jungian psychologist would approve of me phrasing it this way, but as I understand Carl Jung, our brains are sort of hard-wired to embrace myths.
As every English teacher knows, myths and metaphors can help us understand or make sense of the world. The world isn’t really a stage, but the metaphor helps us understand something about the world.
I think we’re all sort of inclined to believe lies that console us or make us feel better. But when lies that make people feel good are weaponized and deployed in the political arena, they can be dangerous.
For example Donald Trump tells these guys that they were the top of the hierarchy, and if they didn’t have everything they deserve, it was because undeserving others, people who are not real Americans, are trying to replace them and take what is theirs:
That is an appealing lie for those guys. Wishful thinking and comforting lies explain a lot of the lies on the far right. The Christian far-Right believes that Trump was sent by God to save America. If you believe that, how do you explain the fact that God let Trump lose the election? Under those circumstances, the only possible explanation is that the Democrats aligned themselves with Satan and stole the election. The alternative is to give up their belief that Trump was sent by God to save America. (What is Trump going to save America from? I’ll get to that.)
Also, Trump’s brand is based on winning. To tell you the truth when the election was approaching, I was a little curious what would happen after Trump lost. If you build your brand on winning, what happen when you stop winning? Turns out the answer is obvious: Deny that you lost.
Another reason people embrace lies is that some people genuinely don’t know how to evaluate sources. They get so blitzed by lies and conflicting stories that they conclude that the truth is unknowable and that it’s better not to listen to the news at all. So instead they listen to someone in their community who they believe knows.
What I want to talk about now are particular kinds of lie: The lies intended to destroy liberal democracy.
First, a definition:
America, according to this definition, has only been a liberal democracy since the modern civil rights and women’s rights movements. Before 1954, racial segregation was legal. What we now call voter suppression laws were legal. In some places, Blacks who tried to vote were killed. One incident is called the election day massacre, which occurred when a black man tried to vote in Florida in 1920. Because of racial segregation, some Black communities were entirely cut off from white America, giving lie to another myth: we all have equal opportunities, so if Person A gets ahead of Person B, it means person A is more resourceful and worthy of things like tax breaks.
It wasn’t until the federal legislation of the 1960s that we came anything close to a liberal democracy. So yes, Republicans are trying to destroy democracy. Another way of saying the same thing is that Republicans want to take us back to the days when America and our institutions were entirely ruled by white men. It wasn’t that long ago. If you were born after, say, 1980, it feels like ancient history, but it isn’t. The white men now in charge of the Republican Party remember those days. They grew up in an America in which white men controlled all of American’s institutions: Courts, universities, political parties.
The authors of How Democracies Die, scholars of democracy, have observed that ethnic majorities rarely give up their dominant status without a fight.
In this lecture, Prof. Levitsky says that we’re going through a political earthquake as America transitions from a nation ruled by white men to a true liberal democracy.
The political parties between say, 1920 and 1960 were fairly civil to each other. That’s because they weren’t that different. Both parties were entirely dominated by white men. So one way to see what’s happening is that liberal democracy in America is trying to take hold for the first time.
Now, back to liars and destructive lies. Another book that I found extraordinarily helpful was Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics.
Keep in mind that he wrote this in the early 1960s. On Hofstadter’s mind was McCarthyism, which as historian Seth Cotler recently pointed out, was also based on a big lie— an entirely fabricated list of 57 “known” communists.
Anyway, writing just after McCarthyism, Hofstadter conducted a thorough review of American politics from before the founding of the nation through McCarthyism and he noticed a pattern among a small impassioned minority on the fringes of the political spectrum. He called their behavior the “paranoid style” in politics.
Hofstadter explained that those embracing the paranoid style believe that unseen satanic forces are trying to destroy something larger in which they belong. According to Hofstadter, the “something larger” to which they belong is generally phrased as “the American way of life.” They feel “dispossessed” and that “America has been largely taken away from them. They are determined to repossess it and prevent what they see as the final act of subversion. They therefore adopt extreme measures. They will stop at nothing to prevent what they see as an impending calamity.
These apocalyptic warnings arouse passion and militancy: The evil enemy must be destroyed—and the fight must go beyond the ordinary give and take of politics. In other words, they’ll play dirty. Newt Gingrich captured this frustration—and call to militancy—when he said Republican must resort to any means necessary.
During the McCarthy era and then Goldwater campaign, Hofstadter concluded that paranoid elements were no longer contained on the far right-wing fringes. He noted that some of the worst traits of the paranoid right were moving into mainstream politics and perhaps becoming permanent.
Well, it seems to me that this is because the changes brought about by the modern Civil Rights and women’s rights movement were becoming permanent.
You can see how this fits together. The far right wing believes they are losing something and they desperately want to hold on to it. What they are losing is an America in which they dominated. This desperate feeling brings us back to the idea of a political earthquake.
The Republicans have a problem. Their demographics are shrinking. The goal of holding on to an era when white men ruled is getting harder to achieve. For them, it feels like they’re drowning. If they don’t stop it now, the America they believe once existed will be lost forever. That’s what Make America Great again is really all about. It’s about taking America back to a time when white men ruled.
The America they long for is also a myth. Heather Cox Richardson talks about the myth of the cowboy: A [white] man worked hard, was self-reliant, “tamed” the “savage” land, and didn’t need government help.
Leave it to Beaver, a popular sitcom from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, and other T.V. shows and movies presented a mythic America. Blacks were happy servants. Little white boys were plucky and mischievous and we expect them to get into trouble now and then. Mom wore an apron and uncomfortable shoes as she dusted and cleansed smiling the entire time. Dad was the man of the house. This is what they think they’re losing. This is what they want back.
In Fascist Lies, I also talked about another reason people embrace lies: People will embrace lies if they think the lie points to a deeper truth:
For example, birtherism. That was a provable lie, but it resonated with people who believed that someone Black isn’t a “real” American and shouldn’t be in power. Remember when Sarah Palin talked about “real” Americans? She took a lot of heat for that because it was obvious she was talking in code, and “real Americans” are white and small town or rural.
Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at NYU, quoted this from a Washington Post piece: “If anything, the Republican Party today is even more committed to myths, falsehoods and a shared hostility to the very idea of an objective reality on which a democratic debate might be built than they were when Trump was still president.”
Yes, the lying has escalated.
The lying is escalating because the Republicans lost. They’re feeling more desperate. If they don’t win the next election, they think their vision of America will be lost forever, and actually, they’re probably right. If the Democrats can keep the House and win a larger majority in the Senate, it will get harder to stop minorities from voting and whites will lose even more of their majority status.
The fact is that lies destroy democracy. This is what Jay Rosen was getting at. Democracy is based on rule of law, which requires a shared factuality. Imagine a court of law when half the jurors or even the judge says, “I don’t believe any of what you’re showing me. The head of my political party said the truth is something else, and I believe him.”
I mentioned earlier that the blitz of lies can make people feel that objective truth is unknowable. That’s one reason the Republican Party is letting loose with a firehose of falsehoods.
Will they win? I don’t think so — unless the rest of us become complacent. They’re outnumbered and their numbers are shrinking and they’re desperate.
The more it looks like they’re going to lose, the more desperate they’re going to become, and the outlandish their lies will be.
So you can expect the firehose of falsehoods to continue.
I suggest you all put on your raincoats so you’re prepared.
A few items of housekeeping: For the last several weeks, instead of lots of short blog posts, I’ve been doing a longer one each Sunday. I may continue with that. Also my website has been undergoing a facelift the past few weeks, and it’s about finished. I hope you like the changes.