Even worse than a President who publicly lies tens of thousands of times during his term is a polity that, first tolerates, and then normalizes the practice. Where we are now is so far removed from the least of the standards we demanded our leaders obey before November of 2016 that it’s hard to know really where to begin redressing the awful slide we facilitated.
Before Trump, getting caught in an outright publicly uttered lie was a scandal that endangered political careers. By the time he was done truthful statements were the exception in all of White House messaging. That incredible devolution occurred for only one reason… it was permitted. “Trump being Trump” will live in infamy as the lexicon for an American civic catastrophe, its delve into totalitarianism, where apathy and distraction abetted the assault on truth every bit as much as willful quest for “power and profit.”
In the end Trump would push the envelope far enough to incite his cultish horde to go too far, creating a nationally televised epiphany that would snap us out of our inert tolerance with the suddenness of the near-death experience our democracy faced. Moscow Mitch, horrific for near two months in his stoic obsession to ignore Trump’s baseless “rigged election” claims, cowered under a table just like everybody else, fully cognizant that procedural sleight-of-hand spared him nothing with a frenzied mob on a violent nihilist rampage. It’s clear by the double-step he subsequently welcomed the Biden Presidency with that McConnell won’t soon forget being slammed by the sick realization his abidance of Trumpism was about to destroy the game he thought he mastered, rendering him nothing more than both victim and accomplice of his own destruction
The inauguration of Joe Biden is as consequential as any event in American history. The multiple crises he has pledged to confront, taken together, are as challenging a set of circumstances as any US President has faced since Abraham Lincoln. The dire straits we now find ourself in is the inevitable result of Fox/AM’s first Presidency, really the only outcome governance obligated from the outset to a false narrative is capable of producing.
Mercifully, we’ve been afforded a chance for a do-over, an opportunity to reset back to a moment before MAGA when churning lies from a public servant’s pulpit was not acceptable; indeed, it was disqualifying. With Biden’s oath of office we can return to a system that demands the narrative be informed by a sensibility the incomparable young poet Amanda Gorman cited: “in truth… in this faith we trust.”
Spinning facts is one thing, manufacturing them quite another. Political competition is what we require to govern ourselves. Weaponizing lies to incite slavish cults will simply kill us… sooner rather than later. Trumpisms like “people are saying” and “everybody tells me” belong on the ash heap of history never to be resurrected, the guff of a Buzz Windrip wannabe. Hopefully, fifty years from now our grandchildren will scratch their heads and wonder how it was possible we could have abided such a wretch.
Yet and still, while moving forward with this redemptive Presidency, it’s imperative to rebuff the false equivalence ready to be dished up by those comfortable within MAGA’s confines, the political class Trump has reared like his other children, conduits to serve his purposes and abase themselves as he sees fit. The hogwash Trump was set upon from the start by hostile partisan forces intent on making him fail instead of dutifully confronting his torrent of outrages is one of thousands of lies, but among the most consequential. Of course, it will form the basis of his defense in a second impeachment trial, a process that will provide a clear direction of where Republicans intend to go from the nadir fidelity to a sociopath led to. Past that, however, it will be leaned on to justify obstructing Biden’s agenda in pursuit of mid-term election gains, continuation of the game they recently almost ended for good.
There is no lie more foundational to Fox/AM’s existence than Roger Ailes’ original projection that everything Democrats and the otherwise “lib” universe does is done for power. From immigration reform to civil rights, entitlements to unions, nothing “the left” pursues is anything but a means to one end. Accepting that premise has for decades liberated ditto heads, et al to do their worst with the clear conscience false equivalence provides. It’s the yellow brick road that ended up at the Capitol a couple of weeks ago, and it’s what will continue to addle this nation as long as we allow it to.
Wednesday’s celebration was long in coming and embraced by millions who can now see and feel better days ahead. However, it was tempered by needless carnage this nation’s worst civic failure is responsible for. More than half a million will die because of Trump’s criminal refusal to lead, his willful pandering to our worst traits in a crisis. Even so, the election was gallingly competitive, with the GOP who enabled it all actually gaining seats in the House and only losing the Senate after Trump sunk to sabotaging his own party’s incumbents in the Georgia runoff.
Sure, we can sleep soundly for now, but we are forced to contemplate what can’t be ignored… all others Biden faced for the nomination probably would have lost. That’s a specter capable of muting most any cheer, and moving forward much thought needs to go into figuring out what to do about it. In the meantime, the repair of our democracy requires no quarter be given to any part of the lies we’ve permitted. The Trump era was among the ugliest span of years in US history, a Presidency never to be repeated, with a set of circumstances unfit to compare to any others. Whatever the GOP ends up doing to itself, whatever iteration it becomes, that’s a message they need to hear very clearly, as often as needed. The promise of truth and the ruin of lies. An apt epitaph for Trump’s tombstone. BC
The true shame, of course, is that big tech procrastinated until the 11th hour to turn him off. If only they had the sack to shut him down months ago. The blissful silence, the soothing absence of his corrosive twittereah (🤣) has been like a balm for my soul. Like the old adage goes, silence is golden.