Lies, Dupes, and How to Quench a Burning America
When I was a small, innocent, and naive boy living in Iowa, I discovered Erich von Däniken’s bestselling book, Chariots of the Gods?. It was full of inexplicables, including ancient geoglyphs recognizable as animals only from high in the sky above Peru’s Nazca Desert. Von Däniken resolved these mysteries with a “simple” answer: our ancient ancestors were given technology by extraterrestrials. Giants of the publishing industry, print media, cinema, and TV all jumped in to validate the stunning claim. I told everyone I knew. “Space aliens visited planet earth!” “Read this book!” “It will change your life!”
A few years later, still an innocent and naive boy living in Iowa, though not as small, I happened across another book by archeologist Clifford Wilson, Crash Go the Chariots. I assumed it a validation of von Däniken’s discovery, crash-landed spacecraft perhaps.
Surprise.
Step-by-step, Wilson dismantled von Däniken with science. I was stunned. I’d been duped. I was embarrassed for having pushed nonsense on so many people, like an ass for impossible conspiracies. I committed never to be suckered again, though I would be.
Decades later, I witness similar gullibility from 60 million Americans still breathlessly devoted to fantastical fabrications of 2020 election fraud. The Internet says so. Right-wing propaganda daily stirs the blood for ratings cash. Demagogues Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley manipulate the flock for political gains. And the National Loser, who claimed the Emmys were rigged because his gameshow didn’t win one, continues to assert the election was rigged.
As Timothy Synder writes, “To make sense of a world in which the 2020 presidential election was stolen requires distrust not only of reporters and experts but also local, state, and federal government institutions [of both parties], from poll workers to elected officials, Homeland Security, and the Supreme Court… Imagine all the people who must have been in on such a plot and all who had to work on the cover-up.”
But as we saw at the U.S. Capitol, lies don’t come free. “To tell the big lie is to be owned by it,” writes Snyder. “No fraud is necessary; only allegations that there are allegations of fraud. Truth is to be replaced by spectacle, facts by faith… To claim the other side stole an election is a promise to steal one yourself.” And paves the way for standard practice.
While cocksure on this and every topic at the tavern, in the halls of reason’s offspring — science and democracy — such people are lost, even when acting out their Beer Hall Putsch. “[Trump sent] them on a rampage in the Capitol,” writes Snyder, “but none appeared to have any idea of how this was to work or what their presence would accomplish. It’s hard to think of a comparable insurrectionary moment when a building of significance was seized that involved so much milling around.”
I struggled to understand these people for four years through personal engagements, email, and face-to-face, including acquaintances, friends, and family. What I came to find with perfect certainty is that there’s no reasoning with a cult. As David Brooks notes, “You can’t argue with people who have their own made-up facts. You can’t have an argument with [the] deranged…” And per Johnathan Rauch, education doesn’t matter. One of them I know has a Ph.D. in my field of physics. All but one of thirteen I know have university degrees.
I once told them my financial success never saw such a high return investment as that provided by a web link. They clicked the bait only to find the U.S. Treasury FinCEN website detailing Trumps most recent record fine for (Russian) money laundering. Their response? All politicians do this — including Lincoln and Reagan; Trump only ran the operation, he didn’t know what went on behind the scenes; God chose Trump, He works in mysterious ways; I didn’t vote for daddy. And this from people who said character was paramount during the Bill Clinton era.
One, a self-described “devout Lutheran,” instructed me to take Apostle Paul’s quote, “‘We no longer lie to one another, we only tell the truth,’ and shove it up your ass. I live in the real world. Force wins!” So much for his devotion.
In a 180-degree reversal of the Founder’s moral means to ends, these people not only prioritize immorality, they glorify it as a tribal identifier. No surprise, at that time “Republicans” favored Putin (60%) and wanted fascist authoritarian rule in the U.S. (52%), while they claimed reverence for the Constitution and flew the Stars and Stripes. Precisely the self-contradiction we saw when Confederate flags waved — from an enemy country we defeated — through the building under which George Washington set its cornerstone.
Per David Brooks, “One core feature of Trumpism is that it forces you to betray every other commitment you might have: to the truth, moral character, the Sermon on the Mount, conservative principles, the Constitution.”
When National Guard surrounded the Capitol to protect it from the president, one “Christian” Trumper I know stood his ground. Commencing with “whataboutism,” because these “Christians” can’t “Pull the plank from your own eye first.” Then he embraced the big lie as “some pretty underhanded ballot manipulation.” The Right got “a little rowdy,” he said, “demonstrating their displeasure,” and for that, “they are Domestic Terrorists?”
As Billy Graham Center Direct Ed Stetzer said, what evangelicals have done is “The definition of selling out your beliefs.” Though it’s not only the evangelical sector, “a sacrilegious mob blasting Christian pop music, chanting ‘Hang Mike Pence.’”
After the botched Capitol coup, our New Right ignored it and doubled down on election fraud claims because Trump taught them something useful. GOPP voters demand lies because truth is an obstacle to winning political power. Even without Trump, his base has made it clear they are eagerly conned. By lying demagogues and cowards like Kevin McCarthy, Louie Gohmert, Rand Paul, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Ron Johnson (there’s so many, 147, House and Senate), and Georgia QAnon Representative Marjorie Taylor Green who claims Hillary Clinton cuts the face off children to wear on her own, and that there’s no evidence a plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. And then there’s NY Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, who clarified she’s never said there was widespread voter fraud but voted to reject the Electoral College certification anyway. Why? Because there are 60 million Americans who believe there was fraud. Why? Because liars like Malliotakis said so.
Notice, all the above are “adults,” not nine-year-old boys duped by another hustler.
How long can a civilization hang on when vipers like these are elected by ignorant masses, charged with national powers?
As Thomas Jefferson said, “A nation that believes it can be ignorant and free is a nation that never was and never can be.”
By April 2020, I started to cut ties with these people. No matter how much proven evidence is triangulated, there’s always another Limbaugh lie to push after the last one failed. It’s no surprise their militias, “better trained, with more weapons, and more members than Al Qaeda or ISIS,” would impersonate Al Qaeda’s 9/11 by leading their own attack on 1/21. Vandals, thieves, and cop killers among them are cheered by Putin, China, Iran, and Trump as he watched his jihadists on TV, stalling support for overwhelmed Capitol Police. A week after the desecration, 45% of “Republicans” supported it, 73% believed Trump was trying to “protect democracy.”
So, can we keep it? as Benjamin Franklin asked of the Republic, or lose it to monsters among our own ex-friends and family?
Starting only with systemic government matters, Johnathan Rauch answers with solutions that take stock of the fact humans are an inherently unstable species. Make gerrymandering illegal. The U.K., Australia, and New Zealand already do this. Eliminate primaries begun in 1912. No one cares about politics so early in a cycle but radicals. This and abolition of gerrymandering would terminate incumbents from being “primaried” by even crankier cranks appealing to extremists. One of his suggestions, to bring back pork-barrel politics in which lawmakers trade legislative votes for wasteful home-district “pork,” was returned in 2021. Now politicians have something to show back home for compromise. The claim that “compromise is treason” has lost some of its teeth. Like the 1787 Constitutional Convention, make select committee deliberations secret from public scrutiny so politicians can speak freely without militant special interests twisting every word. No more 4-day workweeks, then back home. Require all Congressional members reside in D.C. with regular, scheduled, one-on-one family gatherings of the opposition. “It’s really hard to hate your political opponent when you know his wife and kids.” Impose strict regulations on asocial media. Kill Section 230. Resurrect the Fairness Doctrine; crush the propaganda silos. Stop the mountains of corrupt dark money in campaign finance. Fix our educational system. It will be a gigantic bill. But we gave Wall Street’s gamblers trillions after they destroyed the world economy in 2008, we can’t educate our own people out of the gutter? And not STEM alone. Americans proved they know less about Founding governance, law, and ethics than they know about kumquats. When “Republicans” can support the fascism of a Russian-groomed tyrant and feign support for the Constitution, something is unspeakably perverse.
Or, we can jettison reason, justice, and democratic governance. Let Trump and his crime family free, and watch our terrorists take over. Lenin did it, Hitler did it, Mao did it. As we’ve seen, psychologically and morally, almost half of America is little different. A vast resource for Putin and despots like Trump to come.
References not linked to above:
Paragraph 1: Erich von Däniken’s, Chariots of the Gods?, Putnum, 1969. It has a 3.5-star rating with 15,065 ratings on Goodreads at time of this post.
Paragraph 2: Clifford Wilson, Crash Go the Chariots, Lancer Books, 1972, a 3-star review and 72 ratings on Goodreads. Von Däniken’s sensational rubbish sells more than thoughtful analysis.
Paragraph 7: “…is to be owned by it,”: Timothy Synder. “…to steal one yourself.”: Ibid.
Paragraph 8: “… so much milling around.”: Ibid.
Paragraph 14: “Whataboutism” is diversion allowing one not to answer a question defensively, but rather go on the offense to ask what about Black Lives Matter protests, etc. “Pull the plank…” Matthew 7:5.
Paragraph 16: GOPP: Trump’s Grand Old Putin Party
Paragraph 20: “…more members than Al Qaeda or ISIS,”: Former FBI Special Agent Clint Watts. MSNBC Deadline Whitehouse. January 2021.
Paragraph 22: “…when you know his wife and kids.”: Reference lost.
