The lies don’t matter because Trump is against everything they hate
How did it come to this? The protests. The police violence. The 191,000 dead from Coronavirus. The constant doom and gloom advance of totalitarianism in the United States, led by Dear Leader Donald Trump. Haven’t we fought hard and strong against it? Aren’t people aware? Aren’t people outraged?
Trumpism is an existential threat to our democracy. Trumpism threatens the core of our nation and has already resulted in too many deaths. The news and reporting continues to pile up. The facts are out there that Donald Trump is corrupt, a liar, immoral, unpatriotic, and anti-democratic. Our country is aware of it, and has been warned since before November 2016 about the dangers he presented to the country. Yet, the dangers continue to increase with Trump only getting stronger.
The failure of our democracy is not because we haven’t tried to save it, not because we haven’t called him out, not because the corruption, the lies, the criminal acts have not been reported on. Our republic is failing because too much of the population has rejected rational thought and have embraced Trump because he is THEIR champion, the only man who stands against all the things they irrationally fear or hate.
Too much of our country has embraced the irrational. Even in the 21st century, we have discovered that too much of our population rejects the idea of objective truth, of science, of the Enlightenment advances that were supposed to bring us out of the darkness of superstition and rumor and into the light of truth and justice.
Instead we have a country, a leader, and a political party that has embraced a fringe conspiracy theory that a cabal of Democratic leaders are trafficking in children and harvesting their organs, a theory that makes his followers look like a medieval village on a witch hunt. The Trumpists have embraced a president whose Twitter and public statements are a never ending cascade of lies. Corruption? Fake news. Collusion with Russia? Witchhunt! The highest death and infection rate from Coronavirus? We are the country that is best handling the coronavirus, and in fact we’ve beaten it!
With every lie, every cover up, Trump’s followers continue to lap up his every word as gospel. They don’t care about the truth, they don’t care about the dreck that spills from his mouth. They don’t care that it is a lie because they have already decided that the media and others who are spreading the truth are fake and are part of conspiracy to make Trump look bad at every turn. You can’t make people believe the truth if they don’t want to.
It would be one thing if it was just Trump who was spreading lies. He’s not. Even the day after the inauguration, he had his press secretary spread the obvious lie that Trump’s crowd size was bigger. On day one of his administration, he insisted the rest of the White House staff, his cabinet, and the entire Republican Party be complicit in his deceit. And once they embraced the lies of Donald Trump as the truth, his followers in turn embraced these lies as the truth.
Folks in his administration could have spoken the truth. They could have done something to stop him. They could have prevented the inevitable erosion of our democracy and its norms. Instead they collaborated. They collaborated out of self interest, monetary interest, a sense of duty to the nation, because they thought the alternative was worse. And in their collaboration they elucidated to the American people and to the entire world that they do not care about the truth, the actual truth, because there is only one truth left in the United States anymore: The truth of Donald Trump.
In addition to the administration, there is the propaganda apparatus of Fox News, the conservative AM talk show hosts, the One America News network, and the bottomless pit of right wing bloggers, hacks, and liars. Even when a Fox News reporter corroborates the evidence in a story that Trump called Americans who died in war “suckers” and “losers,” Fox News will ignore that truth and continue to pump out the propaganda the Trump machine demands. When the Trump true believers have an unending stream of lies to continually build up the cult of Trump, they began to believe those lies as the truth.
This irrationality, this rejection of science, of reason, of truth, has convinced an entire segment of the population that truth no longer matters. When everything unpleasant is fake and every nugget of truth an enemy conspiracy, the become enveloped and intoxicated by the smoke of Trump’s viperous lies, until they are so stupefied, they cannot feel the fire burning their toes.
They love Trump, lies and all, because Trump is THEIR champion, and Trump is THEIR champion because he is against everything they oppose.
Trump is against all the things they hate. Trump is against abortion and appoints the judges they think will reverse Roe v. Wade. Trump is against immigration, and wants to build a wall to keep immigrants out. Trump is against LGBT rights, and wants to remove protections for LGBT people and prevent trans people from serving in the military. He is against the removal of confederate statues. He is against diversity and teaching about our nation’s history of slavery and racism. He is against globalization and trade deals. To his followers, his lies do not matter, because he is against everything they hate.
Trumpism is not a positive ideology. Trump and Trumpism does not define itself by what it believes or the things it wants to build or the systems it wants to create. Trumpism defines itself by what it opposes and whims of the leader.
Trump and Trumpism has no interest in governing, and what little governing it does accomplish is for the benefit of the corporations and millionaires who want to eliminate their tax burden or regulations. Trumpism is a negative ideology, it sees no bright tomorrow, only itself as a bulwark of power to oppose all of the things its followers hate.
Trump’s followers can stomach his lies because he stands against what they hate. You would think believing in known lies would be irrational or hard to do in the 21st century, but Trumpists believe the lies because they confirm their base irrational fears and hatreds. Just like our ancestors were afraid of demons and witches, Trump has stirred up those dormant ape-like fears of the unknown to create his own modern boogeymen. The lies confirm the hate and the hate confirms the lies.
It might be too late to stop him, but truth and reason have to prevail. Because the truth will set us free. And the truth is, Donald Trump is almost a dictator and must be removed from office if our republic is to survive and if we are to be free.
