When Lying Went Mainstream

Misinformation, conspiracy theories, science denial, and out-and-out lying are probably responsible for two thirds of the COVID-19 infections and deaths in this country. The polarization of a medical reality, prevention and treatment, became a test of party loyalty… and to a president who absolutely placed his avarice and quest for personal power above any semblance of genuine concern for the American people. Fact-checkers have noted Donald Trump’s presidential reign has been marked by over 23 thousand discrete Trump falsehoods. But utter that factual reality in any super red enclave and you might get punched in the face or get your tires slashed. The feelings are that strong. Having strong feelings based on lies and mythology has become toxic if not deadly.

Facts and nature are implacable. You cannot force them out with bombs, slogans, votes or political mandates. They just are. Their most powerful and destructive forces do best (read: worst) when they are ignored or denied. Reacting to their destructive impacts, rather than preparing for their inevitability or preventing what is possible, is the least efficient and most costly way to deal with the consequences. We have lied our way against preparedness. To those who are examining the underlying philosophy of purposely planting falsehoods as the gospel truth are often stunned at the effectiveness of this technique. We once believed that only undemocratic societies could be built and maintained on an autocrat’s bed of lies. We were wrong.

Strangely, the newly configured Trump-dominated Republican Party is no longer the party of balanced budgets, business, free trade, efficient and well-trained government bureaucrats and fiscal responsibility. Just looking at the corporate tax reform passed in 2017, we saw exploding and unsustainable budget deficits that will continue as long as these tax rates remain in effect… without any other serious economic benefit to the nation. No massive new well-paying jobs. No huge new investments in productivity and new industries. Just humongous borrowings to benefit the rarified air of only the richest in the land.

We continue to see GOP governors in hard core states, where COVID infections and death are worse on a per capita basis than even the worst urban crises and where hospital capacity has long since run out, continue to tout “open everything” and “masks are a personal choice.” The constant minimalization of the horrific consequences of a COVID infection (even for those who survive) has become immutable doctrine. Goaded by their leaders, there continue to be idiots, and I do mean idiots, who believe that they have a constitutional right to walk around, ignore safe distancing and mask requirements, whether or not they are carriers of the disease. There are even some ready to kidnap and kill a governor who was fighting to impose safe practices on her terrified public. It’s still a “hoax” to too many.

How did we get here? There has been a core constituency of about 25-30% of the electorate who, for the last 50 years, believed in conspiracy theories, the existence of a deep state aimed to dismantle white dominance, while embracing pioneer values even in a modern urban-centric nation, and who simply resist inconvenient facts. They’ve have been silent and on the periphery. They kept their opinions, their voices, within their communities, knowing that the modern world was moving in a different direction. Where science and technology, often invented and developed by immigrants of color, were the new power and value creators. 

Donald John Trump saw what few politicians saw: the voiceless passion of this constituency… that if they were given a powerful leader who enabled their voice, they could perhaps impose their will on the entire nation. Untapped populist voters. They may be on the wrong side of history, but they now seem to be willing to take the entire system down if they cannot now continue imposing their misdirected views, fully legitimized by the President. Trump may have ended his term as president, unlikely ever to regain that powerful position, but that populist smoke has left the bottle and, with or without a vocal Trump going forward, his now loud-voice deniers will not be easily silenced. 

How did this happen? Trump needed to control that constituency’s entire belief system, a seemingly unlikely possibility given a constantly inquiring and vocal press. But mainstream television, journals and radio were easy targets to the new platforms of social media, where short resonant soundbites, repeated frequently enough, could stultify truth and journalistic integrity simply by reinforcing what this once-excluded constituency wanted to hear.

“COVID-19 and Donald Trump’s election loss will dominate the history books about 2020, but the story connecting those two things and nearly everything else this year was the Republican Party’s adoption of disinformation as one of its primary political strategies.

“It was the culmination of a years-long effort by Trump to pit himself, relentlessly, against the press. He has always sought to entrench the news media as his ‘opposition party,’ ABC News White House correspondent Jonathan Karl wrote in his book on Trump, adding that too often the press has fallen into the trap.

“Trump sought out an ever-escalating war against reality, starting the day he sent his spokesman to the White House Briefing Room to brazenly lie about the size of his inauguration crowd. His attack on the truth has aimed to separate his supporters entirely from an independent press that could hold him accountable.

“The offensive was two-pronged. The frontal assault was to label the media ‘fake news’ and even to label it the ‘enemy of the people,’ a phrase with a history of being used by genocidal dictators. And then there was a broader pattern of provoking — maybe even inviting and welcoming — fact checks and criticism by sending out an ongoing cascade of mistruths, outright lies and controversies.

“The endgame was to shatter any trust in mainstream news outlets among his supporters, building on decades of complaints about a liberal bias in the media. Republicans have always portrayed themselves as the victims of media bias, sometimes for good reason, and sometimes because they need a scapegoat to excuse their own shortcomings.

“Trump’s innovation was to say the press was part of a grand conspiracy against him, that it is always lying, that its members work for a shadowy cabal of elites looking to sell out the country… He aimed for total control of what his supporters believed. By the end of 2019 he largely had it, and in 2020 he proved it…

“This was the year of the infodemic as much as it was the year of the pandemic, and the biggest superspreader of disinformation was the sitting president. It’s not just that Trump lied or misled more than 23,000 times since taking office. It’s that he made such behavior acceptable, leading right-wing media to create a permanent unreality echo chamber and showing the GOP it can win elections by catering to this.” John Ward writing for Yahoo! News, December 17th.

Under Trump, it became socially acceptable to make fun of and denigrate minorities, from racial and ethnic groups to those with disabilities. Overt racism became acceptable too. How many teachers and parents fought with their miscreant children charges, when those young voices justified totally unacceptable behavior by simply saying, “Well, the President does it.” We have made this bed, and there remains a very large body of voters hellbent on continuing what they believe is a righteous war. They use words they do not truly understand – usually references to “patriotism” and “battling socialism” – to decide which laws they will follow and which sections of the Bible apply to them. Ah, the New Testament as a “menu,” without regard to the overall vector of true Christianity.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as we face a new year, our nation has reached a crossroads between continuing as unified democracy (with differing voices) or eschewing truth and compromise, a reality that will plunge the nation into an unraveling and continuing fall in power, influence and success; we cannot succeed until truth matters again.