There is a long tradition in the United States of former presidents building libraries to contain the history of their presidencies. Donald Trump, Karen Tumulty writes, is doing something entirely different -- he's building an alternate reality:
When other presidents leave office, they build libraries to house their records and honor their achievements.
President Trump is constructing something far more ambitious: an entire alternate reality.
The hour-and-40-minute diatribe of lies and grievance that he delivered Saturday night on a tarmac in Valdosta, Ga., was remarkable in that regard.
In his first big public appearance after losing the election to Democrat Joe Biden, Trump made only a glancing mention of the coronavirus pandemic that is spiking and taking the lives of record numbers of Americans on a daily basis. There were few masks apparent in the crowd.
The lame-duck president ostensibly was there to make the case for the two Republican candidates in next month’s runoff election, which will determine control of the Senate.
But as is typically the case with Trump, the event was really all about himself. His rant was a live-action version of his Twitter feed, spewing evidence-free claims that the election was stolen.
What is truly frightening is that so many people flock ecstatically to Trump's universe, ripping off their masks as they do so. And the Republican Party is all in:
When 25 of my colleagues at The Post surveyed the offices of all 249 Republicans in the House and Senate late last week, they found only 27 of them acknowledging the reality that Biden won the election. Two members claimed, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that Trump came out on top. The remaining 220 lawmakers declined to say who won an election that took place more than a month ago and that wasn’t all that close.
What makes all of this more dangerous is the fact that the delusion being fueled by Trump has taken hold among his party’s rank and file. Polls are showing upward of 60 percent of Republicans believe the election was rigged. And that has consequences for our democracy that have the potential to linger long after Trump has left office.
It seems to matter not a whit to them that Trump’s baseless claims of massive election fraud are being thrown out of courts across the country.
COVID kills people. Insanity turns people into zombies who -- unfortunately -- survive.
nbcnews.com
11 comments:
Kind of reminds me of the Reformacons here in Canada insisting that, after the last federal election, their leader should be Prime Minister because, in their words, "they got the most votes". One thing I have noticed about those of the right wing persuasion, they do tend to live in an alternative universe when it comes to who actually wins and who actually loses.
Its like they choose to ignore the fact that in Canada, we have such a thing as a "minority" government, which means any number of legitimate party candidates can be elected and therefore can form a coalition, something that apparently does not occur in the system in the USA, which the Cons desperately would like to believe should happen here in Canada.
It is the nature of fascism to construct alternate reality. Benjamin Carter Hett in his book The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic quotes Kurt Schumacher, a German social democrat who opposed Hitler, spent the war in concentration camps and went on to help found and lead the post-war W. German SDU party. Schumacher remarked of the Nazis: “The whole national socialist agitation is a constant appeal to the inner swine in human beings. If we recognize anything at all about national socialism, it is the fact that it has succeeded for the first time in German politics in completely mobilizing human stupidity.”
This is Trump and the Republican Party in a nutshell - constantly appealing to people's inner swine to mobilize stupidity. That won't end on January 20.
Cap
Hi Owen. Completely off-topic but I think I'm back. I've set up a new blog, The Disaffected Lib Mk.II. The six week hiatus was a useful break. I followed ProgBlog daily and was struck by the narrow focus of many of the posters. The big stuff - Covid, the US elections took most of the oxygen out of the room.
The pandemic impacted heavily on the presidential election while the Repugs gained seats in the House and may yet hold on to the Senate. I've been savoring Bob Woodward's latest book, Rage, as a recapitulation of four years of madness.
As your post points out, Americans have reverted to something resembling primitive tribalism in which fact and knowledge are displaced by myth and conspiracy, people abandoning logic and critical thinking for base instinct-driven emotion.
Out of desperation many want to believe in Joe Biden as some redeemer of American democracy, the guy to make everything right again. I don't think that can be done by a change of president. American society must first heal. Some measure of social cohesion must be restored. The forces of dissension remain too powerful.
There are all kinds of coalition governments around the world, Lulymay. Americans -- particularly Republicans -- can't conceive of such a system. And our Conservatives take their cues from Republicans.
"Mobilizing stupidity." I like the phrase, Cap -- because it succinctly captures what Trump has done and is doing.
I'm glad you're back, Mound. I know there are many others who will cheer your return. You're right. Biden's character can be a catalyst for healing. But that process has to be societal. And -- at the moment -- American society is diseased, deeply ill.
If the Republic is to be saved, it will have to be saved by we, the people.
Owen, as a supplement to this discussion CBC Ideas has a piece up on "How capitalism is destroying democracy"
One can listen to it here.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/how-capitalism-is-destroying-democracy-1.5786136
And Cap, above, is right, the stupid are being mobilized.
The Disaffected Lib Mk.II.
Not working for me!
any suggestions.
TB
An excellent link, Toby. Thanks for the suggestion.
I also couldn't bring it up, Mound.
Mound's new link is https://the-disaffected-lib.blogspot.com/
The next problem is I can't comment.
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