Little politicians who make the Big Lie possible

Tony Norman, Tribune News Service

“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.” — Octavia Butler

Lies are the lingua franca of these polarised times. As we stare into the narrowing eyes of our brethren across the widening divide, there is one thing we can agree on with near unanimity — former President Donald Trump is a liar. The problem for our democracy is that half the electorate doesn’t consider Trump’s lack of integrity a disqualifying trait in the least. In the pursuit of righteous dominion over the dreaded “liberal elites,” lying is considered a virtue.

Even those who begrudgingly agree that lying is Trump’s default setting will also insist that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him by the media, the Democrats and a conspiracy initiated by the “Deep State.” They’re willing to uphold this lie at the expense of their own integrity because it resonates with their own hopes and dreams.

Even the majority of white evangelicals, the former moral consciences of the GOP, don’t consider Trump’s tendency to lie and to bear false witness, against everyone and everything, a Faustian deal breaker.

Jesus’ denunciation of Satan as “the father of lies” strikes this generation of pragmatic believers as the most untenable kind of spiritual wokeness. Refusing to lie in the pursuit of power is the only unforgivable sin these days. That’s why Jesus may have been a bit of a snowflake when he rebuked the devil three times during his temptation in the wilderness. Trump would’ve cut a righteous deal with the father of lies and spared humanity a lot of misery.

Because they are the most born again of cynics, Trumpvangelicals are more than happy to excuse the twice-impeached president’s habitual lying. America’s God, who has always been more theocrat than Democrat, is OK with moral compromises as long as the one doing the compromising is a known defender of religious liberty and Christian supremacy.

This week, lying, perpetuating big lies and embracing the Big Lie have resulted in big headlines and even more polarization. The late science fiction writer Octavia Butler’s words have never felt more prescient.

We always knew former Attorney General William Barr was a liar and that his summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation misled the American people and gave Trump the justification to claim “total exoneration” and get away with it even after a heavily redacted version was released a month later. This week, federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson excoriated Barr’s mischaracterization of the Mueller report as “disingenuous” and ordered the release of a Department of Justice legal memo concocted at the time to disguise the extent of Barr’s mendacity and toadyism.

Once the memo is released, there will be no doubt about Barr’s role in “saving” the Trump presidency at its most vulnerable point prior to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Such fealty to the former president at the expense of truth and constitutional checks and balances demonstrates the corruption of the nation’s highest law enforcement officer and his willingness to sacrifice his reputation to give cover to the lie that the 2016 Trump campaign wasn’t the recipient of help from the Russians.

Judge Jackson’s rebuke of former AG Barr barely registered a yawn from Republican House members currently engaged in purging Rep. Liz Cheney from her position as its No. 3 leader.

For her unwillingness to acknowledge the former president as the actual winner of the 2020 election and her willingness to denounce him for his role in inciting a violent insurrection at the Capitol, Cheney, whose voting record testifies to her bona fides as one of the most hard-line conservatives in the House, is expected to be voted out of leadership by her caucus and replaced by a pol with a more sycophantic attitude toward Trump. By removing Cheney from a position of leadership in the party, the GOP is signalling that it will not tolerate the insults posed by reality when it comes to the outcome of the 2020 race, especially from its more reality-grounded members.

It will not tolerate any “truth” if it embarrasses its leader, who is afraid of the unflattering glare of truth. The GOP prefers to be led by opportunists who are as pliable as Gumby and are willing to set personal morality aside to acquire power.

The lie that Trump won in 2020 is the only acceptable “truth” a Republican is allowed to utter without expecting censure or a primary challenge in 2022. Any Republican who sings from a different hymnal can expect a similar fate to what is currently befalling Cheney.

In response to Trump’s lie about widespread voter fraud last year and that the election was “stolen,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis followed neighbouring Georgia in signing new voting restrictions into law designed to impede minority turnout in 2022. As his star continues to rise, DeSantis can expect his political mentor to grow increasingly uncomfortable with his raised profile and seek to plunge an ice pick into his head to tamp down his popularity.

It is the fate of all Trump sycophants to be destroyed by their master sooner or later, and he knows it. Still, like other pols who sought to control Trump by flattering him, DeSantis will end up as just another corpse on the road to the final collapse of the GOP.

And, of course, Trump’s most outrageous lie of all — the Big Lie and misinformation swirling around COVID-19 — continues to hobble the nation’s recovery as the majority of Republican adults refuse to get vaccinated.

At Fox News, Tucker Carlson, the network’s most popular bloviator, wondered aloud this week about whether the vaccine has killed as many as 3,700 Americans in recent months. To call his speculation irresponsible is an understatement, but it is terrific TV because it feeds the suspicions of his most paranoid viewers.

Last week, a Republican lawmaker in California asked a doctor during a hearing called by the Orange County board of supervisors whether the COVID-19 shots contained tracking devices. It is doubtful that the politician who asked the question believed it himself, but many of his constituents in that red district do. It is just one more manifestation of the Big Lie started and perpetuated by the former president.

As the conservative scholar and economist Thomas Sowell said in another context: “The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.”