The Lies Didn't Start with Trump, Part 1
The GOP's decades of deceptions created a base divorced from reality.
Denouncing a Republican politician for hypocrisy and duplicity is much like telling a magician that he didn’t really cut a woman in half: Both of you know it’s true, but the accused will respond only with a smug smile, a shoulder shrug, and a disingenuous denial.
At least, that has been how the game has been played for a few decades. Now, those who giggled about recognition of their perfidious character watch in dismay as wackadoodles who spent years marinating in delusions stream into the halls of power. Indeed, the 2016 nomination of Donald Trump - a malignant narcissist and pathological liar for whom no conspiracy theory is too absurd - did not propel the GOP to suddenly choose deceit as a governing principle; rather, it was the culmination of long journey from being a party of ideas to one with a voter base and even some politicians having lost touch with reality.
This once great party’s descent into madness is not just the spasm of a dying institution, but is something that threatens the survival of our liberal democracy. With Trump’s every lie promoted as Gospel by the GOP, there cannot be policy debates. The split is far from even: While Democrats wish Republicans would stop lapping up the other-world of fantasy ladled out by Fox News and its ilk, the Republican base of cranks and kooks demand its opponents stop eating children, worshipping Satan, stealing elections with the help of dead dictators and foreign satellites, advocating Communism, and seeking the demise of America - you know, what they hear on Fox News and read on their social media accounts.
Only through the continuous application of the disinfectant of defeat can Republicans - and if not them, a successor conservative party - be righted back to reason and the danger be stopped. And so, the 2022 midterms are the most important in history, just as significant as the 2020 presidential election campaign was and the 2024 election will be. Defeat of the GOP must not only be decisive, it must be crippling. This multi-part series will examine assorted elements of the dangers, but let’s start with the key one: They are liars.
Most of the major newspapers and networks have adopted Marquess of Queensbury rules when addressing the utterance of utter falsehoods by Trump acolytes. A velvet glove doesn’t deter deliberate deceit, and it certainly hasn’t here. Calling the words of Republican politicians “at odds with the truth” and “not factually accurate” is the coward’s way of communicating that GOP campaigns are often based on lies, innuendo and more lies. There is a dramatic difference between the usual nip-and-tucking of campaign season and the flood of prevarication pouring out of the mouths of Republicans in modern times. And unfortunately, too many of its voting base - and now its own candidates - weren’t in on the scam. They believed the nonsense and conspiracy theories that sane Republicans spewed desire knowing of their falsity.
Before we get into policy, just examine the personal details about Democrats that are the focus of their lies: Joe Biden has dementia. Hillary Climton was dying, while also suffering from epilepsy and Parkinson’s. Barack Obama is a secret Muslim secretly born in Kenya as part of a dastardly plot to install a non-American in the White House and force Sharia law on the country. All of these are lies told by legitimate national Republican politicians, on Fox News, in the online conservative media bubble, and believed by rabid GOP voters. Never mind there is literally no evidence for any of it. Never mind that there is documentary evidence that every word of it is false. The Fox News rage addicts never hear about reality, and Republican politicians - again, the sane ones - laugh and laugh as they knowingly spin lies. Worse, when reality intrudes - for example, Hillary Clinton still walks the earth and appears on television - Republicans either pretend they never discussed her health or spin off into madness (Take the QAnon Cult, which I will get into in another part of this series. This dangerous members of the GOP base, totaling in the millions of people, explain Hillary appearances by insisting she was executed and the woman we see now is a clone or an actor wearing a mask. Seriously.)
As for the “born in Kenya” slur: Donald Trump said it. So did Mark Meadows. And others pushed it just far enough that the base would believe it was true; those included Sarah Palin, Senators Richard Shelby and David Vitter, current and former GOP House members Jean Schmidt, Roy Blunt, Nathan Deal, Michele Bachmann, Mike Coffman, and many, many more. As for the “secret Muslim” canard, nothing underscores the knowing duplicity by Republicans that they were suggesting Obama practiced Islam while simultaneously condemning him for failing to “sufficiently” denounce controversial statements of his pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicag, Jeremiah Wright. Because, you know, lots of Muslims also attend mainline Protestant churches.
Then, Joe Biden and dementia. This canard has become so accepted among Republicans that they don’t even consider it controversial anymore. Their evidence? Deceptively edited videos, false Facebook posts, commentary on Fox by sociopathic hacks like Tucker Carlson, and the rest of the usual propaganda. They froth in delight when the long-prone-to-gaffes Biden commits a gaffe, or when - like others who struggle with stuttering - he shifts away from a difficult sound by switching to an alternative word, a technique called “circumlocution” which can lead to mangled syntax. While his physician declared Biden healthy and fit for the presidency, the headlines in conservative media went to “White House Doctor Says Biden Not ‘Cognitively Fit’ to Be President.” Never mind that doctor was Ronny Jackson, the wild-eyed Trump physician who essentially declared is God King to be healthier than any man in history.
The other “proof”: A video of Biden turning to shake the hands of no one (it was dishonestly edited to hide the fact that he was recognizing people standing on each side of him.) A video from last year re-dated to make it appear that Biden said COVID vaccines would help Floridians after Hurricane Ian. Claims that Biden is merely a puppet controlled by staff and Kamala Harris (while other times he is portrayed as all powerful.)
This month, Idaho Sen. Jim Risch pulled a classic on the “puppeteer” lie at a hearing on Afghanistan when he tried to force Secretary of State Antony Blinken to admit Biden is controlled by someone who - at a recent event - shut off the President’s microphone to prevent him from talking. (No surprise: Risch was simply repeating a lie he heard on Fox.) “He can’t even speak without someone in the White House censoring it or signing off on it,” Risch said. “As recently as yesterday, in mid-sentence, he was cut off by someone in the White House who makes the decision that the president of the United States is not speaking correctly. I would like to know who this person is. This is a puppeteer act.”
Sounds pretty bad. But as usual, reality has this nasty habit of exposing the deep duplicity of purported “Christians” who have no qualms about violating the Ninth Commandment against lying. The dastardly mic cut off occurred at what is called a “pool spray, ” when photographers take video and stills at the start of a private event and then leave - that was the point, and is always the point, when the audio and video feeds end.
And don’t even begin to think that these lies began with Obama. For those not old enough to remember, they didn’t just go after John Kerry’s policies – they accused him of faking his heroics, of lying his way to a Purple Heart and a Silver Star (in the process raising doubts about the integrity of those awards for every soldier who has won them), and of shooting a boy in the back. Al Gore was falsely accused of claiming to have invented the Internet by selective editing of a statement that was too nuanced for idiots to understand. Bill Clinton - and then First Lady Hillary Clinton - were part of a crime family that murdered everyone in their path. (This has now been transformed into the “Biden Crime Family” by some wild-eyed bottom feeders.) Some of the supposed Clinton murders were hilarious, like when the President killed a couple of teenagers by hitting them with a train or caused a plane to crash, killing his Commerce Secretary who supposedly was about to disclose all the Clinton’s criminal secrets.
At bottom, the GOP has become a childish, self-centered party that is unfit to govern. You don’t need to look any further than in their immature refusal to call the Democratic Party by its real name – instead, they insist on the Democrat Party, the same way that the bully in some 1980s movie would call a character “slob” if his real name was “Bob.” What is the purpose of this? I don’t know. This is the stuff of mental illness, yet it has been advanced for decades by supposedly responsible Republicans. There are a couple of reasons why: The emergence of conservative media like Fox in 1996, which began by presenting the conservative take on the news until it found that trafficking in lunacy and lies proved more profitable. The second reason, though, is sadder: The Republicans are brain dead when it comes to policy. Seriously, what do they stand for anymore other than tax cuts for the rich? Free trade used to be a foundational economic policy of the GOP, but that was tossed out as soon as Trump started snarling at trade agreements. Now, the GOP is the party that cheers protectionism, a turnaround that would have been incomprehensible just a few years ago. North Korea was such an enemy that Fox slammed Obama for suggesting that might, someday, be circumstances under which the United States might speak to Kim Jong Un; once Trump fell in love with Kim, the party became fan boys of the dictator.
So, when you stand for nothing, all that is left is stirring up rage. Fear and anger wins more votes than policy. The GOP knows this, and so has spent decades demonizing Democrats by making stuff up. They have torn apart the country with lies, solely so they can dole out trillions to the rich and then share in the backwash as their beneficiaries throw a portion of the cash back to the Republicans. One result is that the party has to portray Democratic standard-bearers not as people with policy differences, but as evil incarnate: Islamic, dying, demented criminals who spend nights craving the destruction of America while waiting for their big checks from the right’s ultimate boogeyman, George Soros.
None of this is sustainable. And this is why the Republicans have to be wiped out in every election possible. No country can survive when half its population lives in a fantasy world.
Next in Part 2: The Lies about Policy
So glad to see you here, Kurt, and your first post is spot on. I hope your series gets the attention it deserves. One request, though. Please use the traditional black letters
on a white background. This combination is really hard on old eyes. Thanks.
Thank you so much for pointing out their lies.