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elfsYou've seen Chernobyl, right? The theme of that series is about lies, mostly official lies told by the state to protect the state. At each step of the way, the scientists and engineers who understand the scale of the catastrophe are pitted against government apparatchik who hope that the problem isn't that bad, lie as if the problem weren't that bad, and cover up to ensure that nobody knows that problem is that bad, until the evidence and the bodies and the threat piles up so high that someone has to act. As the main character, Valery Legasov, says in the opening voiceover:
Chernobyl makes an excellent touchstone for Donald Trump's blithering daily briefings, in which he attacks anyone who suggests he's not doing everything right, and who repeatedly puts forth proposals that make the head of the CDC Infectious Diseases Unit facepalm moments after reminding people not to touch their own faces. His fans continue to support him, rallying around and claiming he's doing everything right, that he's always done everything right, that there have been no missteps and delays, and that right now America is "the best of all possible countries" in which to be infected.
To say "Donald Trump lies to the American people" is to state a fact, not an opinion. These aren't little lies, they're massive, dangerous lies, meant to protect the crippled ego of a small man who somehow landed the largest job on the planet.
Trump's lies aren't like the Soviet lies of Chernobyl, though. There was no Internet in the Soviet Union; news was tightly controlled by the state, and there were no alternative sources of information to help people tell one from the other. In Trump's world, there are plenty of alternative sources, and many of them are fact-checking his furious lies in real time, documenting that Trump has materially lied about something or other an average of 15 times a day.
In a paper from 2018, a team of social scientists showed that when a political constituency no longer views the political system as legitimate, they will claim that a serial liar is the most "authentically appealing" candidate, and will work to elect one if possible. Their reasons are simple: the system is illegitimate and must be wrecked to a sufficient degree that their own preferences can be re-installed and the legitimacy of the system, in their eyes, can be restored.
To most of Donald Trump's supports, the United States lost all legitimacy as a country when it allowed a black man to become President. The election of Barack Obama to the presidency heralded the moment when the "secret constitution," the sort-of meta-constitution that we all knew undergirded the written one, the one that made Africans 3/5ths human and never to be citizens, was dealt a crippling blow. The racists could no longer pretend the system belonged to them.
At the same time, other minorities were making their voices known, and the Christianist right garnered power from their followers' horrified reactions to the rise of gay and trans rights.
To racists and Christianists (and while there's some overlap, they're not entirely the same thing), the system was no longer legitimate. This is why Evangelicals and neo-Nazis both love Trump.
Have you ever seen one of those bumper-sticker flags that has the shape of the American flag, but it's black and white with a blue line in the middle? The meaning of that flag encompasses the anger of the racist right: it's a distortion of the American flag and a violation of American norms, and its meaning is that only the "thin blue line" of the police keeps blacks and whites apart. The visible desecration of our flag by draining it of its usual colors speaks to the idea that the actual flag is illegitimate, and no longer serves "Americans."
This is why we're here: a seething, simmering anger that America would dare to elect a black guy created a crisis of legitimacy.
The only thing now is that we're going to learn the actual cost of hiring a chronic, serial liar and pathological narcissist to the highest office in the land. He did what they wanted: he dismantled the systems that protected America and weakened its systems. He surrounded himself with sycophants and toadies.
Now we're going to pay the price. Because our country was weakened and, at that very moment, an outbreak as scary as the 1918 Influenza Pandemic hit us, and hit us hard. We are unprepared for it, our leadership is panicking, and our systems will strain and break under the failures going on around us.
Trump supporters, from this day forward, know this: we see you. We know what you did. When our elders die, we will hold you responsible. When our friends with underlying illnesses, the ones with asthma or diabetes, the ones fighting cancer, the ones who finally stopped smoking a few years ago... when they die, we will hold you responsible.
Their deaths will not be caused by lies. Their deaths will be because you loved, you embraced, you empowered those lies.
What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories?
Chernobyl makes an excellent touchstone for Donald Trump's blithering daily briefings, in which he attacks anyone who suggests he's not doing everything right, and who repeatedly puts forth proposals that make the head of the CDC Infectious Diseases Unit facepalm moments after reminding people not to touch their own faces. His fans continue to support him, rallying around and claiming he's doing everything right, that he's always done everything right, that there have been no missteps and delays, and that right now America is "the best of all possible countries" in which to be infected.
To say "Donald Trump lies to the American people" is to state a fact, not an opinion. These aren't little lies, they're massive, dangerous lies, meant to protect the crippled ego of a small man who somehow landed the largest job on the planet.
Trump's lies aren't like the Soviet lies of Chernobyl, though. There was no Internet in the Soviet Union; news was tightly controlled by the state, and there were no alternative sources of information to help people tell one from the other. In Trump's world, there are plenty of alternative sources, and many of them are fact-checking his furious lies in real time, documenting that Trump has materially lied about something or other an average of 15 times a day.
In a paper from 2018, a team of social scientists showed that when a political constituency no longer views the political system as legitimate, they will claim that a serial liar is the most "authentically appealing" candidate, and will work to elect one if possible. Their reasons are simple: the system is illegitimate and must be wrecked to a sufficient degree that their own preferences can be re-installed and the legitimacy of the system, in their eyes, can be restored.
To most of Donald Trump's supports, the United States lost all legitimacy as a country when it allowed a black man to become President. The election of Barack Obama to the presidency heralded the moment when the "secret constitution," the sort-of meta-constitution that we all knew undergirded the written one, the one that made Africans 3/5ths human and never to be citizens, was dealt a crippling blow. The racists could no longer pretend the system belonged to them.
At the same time, other minorities were making their voices known, and the Christianist right garnered power from their followers' horrified reactions to the rise of gay and trans rights.
To racists and Christianists (and while there's some overlap, they're not entirely the same thing), the system was no longer legitimate. This is why Evangelicals and neo-Nazis both love Trump.
Have you ever seen one of those bumper-sticker flags that has the shape of the American flag, but it's black and white with a blue line in the middle? The meaning of that flag encompasses the anger of the racist right: it's a distortion of the American flag and a violation of American norms, and its meaning is that only the "thin blue line" of the police keeps blacks and whites apart. The visible desecration of our flag by draining it of its usual colors speaks to the idea that the actual flag is illegitimate, and no longer serves "Americans."
This is why we're here: a seething, simmering anger that America would dare to elect a black guy created a crisis of legitimacy.
The only thing now is that we're going to learn the actual cost of hiring a chronic, serial liar and pathological narcissist to the highest office in the land. He did what they wanted: he dismantled the systems that protected America and weakened its systems. He surrounded himself with sycophants and toadies.
Now we're going to pay the price. Because our country was weakened and, at that very moment, an outbreak as scary as the 1918 Influenza Pandemic hit us, and hit us hard. We are unprepared for it, our leadership is panicking, and our systems will strain and break under the failures going on around us.
Trump supporters, from this day forward, know this: we see you. We know what you did. When our elders die, we will hold you responsible. When our friends with underlying illnesses, the ones with asthma or diabetes, the ones fighting cancer, the ones who finally stopped smoking a few years ago... when they die, we will hold you responsible.
Their deaths will not be caused by lies. Their deaths will be because you loved, you embraced, you empowered those lies.
