A WHOLESALE INDIFFERENCE

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference Elie Wiesel (Romanian/American, Nobel Peace Prize 1986, political activist, 1928-2016)

What does this year’s election represent? This is a sobering question all around us. This also sounds unsettling, different from what one might expect. There are guardians but are they listened to? Even if we believe they are unknowable, there is a connection between the ultimate goal of a powerful voice and reality.? Toxic as it may be… we need to listen.

Here we read of our time in Steve Benen’s book MINISTRY OF TRUTH (Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past) In his searing, investigative, real-time story of the last years and of the Republican Party, the author describes the mirror of our time. As long as historical records have existed, we read of authoritarian regimes, propaganda, myths, lies, erasing opponents, and disposing of crimes, and we have learned that these are not events of the past, but are happening now. Today we are bombarded daily, hourly with fake news and dangerous rhetoric. Technology gives us this toxicity instantaneously … we need to listen and read carefully, for it affects everyone. Here are some excerpts.

Firstly, this campaign of rewriting recent history is built on a foundation of pernicious pillars. The first is a wholesale indifference toward reality. If the skirmish in this conflict is going to succeed, its warriors must make a deliberate choice not to care about what the public already knows to be true or what independent fact-checkers will say when the dust settles.

The second is the absence of shame. Campaigns to rewrite recent history fail if those doing the rewriting of history express a degree of embarrassment, betraying their mendacious goals. The public will pick up sheepishness, so Republicans who intend to replace a factual series of events with fictional ones must fully commit to the new narratives, no matter how ridiculous or absurd it is.

The third is the role of allies. No one person, no matter how powerful or politically influential, can rewrite history on his or her own. The GOP’s, (once called The Grand Party,) war on the recent past relies on a comprehensive approach, incorporating conservative media allies and like-minded partisans willing to echo the preferred, made-up dangerous story.

Contemporary Republicans have launched a war on the recent past, for a couple of inescapable reasons. Part of this is born of uniquely indefensible circumstances: many contemporary scandals have proved unspinnable. It’s one thing to try to change the subject in response to a routine controversy; it is something else when a Republican in the White House fails spectacularly to respond to a pandemic and more than a million Americans die from a dangerous contagion…also by denying how contagious this virus is. A cycle of vicious, hateful events followed and then denial.

Another subject or tactic has become a staple of Republican politics…including the final full day in the Oval Office of the former president, by also not accepting that he lost his re-election.? For example, presidential farewell addresses hold a special place in American tradition. George Washington voiced fears over factionalism in 1796 and those concerns remain a stable of history classes more than two centuries later. To the extent that Trump’s farewell address on January 19, 2021, will be remembered, it’s unlikely to be held in high regard. Then we all remember January 6, when an insurrectionist mob attacked the U.S. Capital at his behest, sparking conversations among his Cabinet members about removing Trump from office by way of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.

We all know what happened, delays, lies, weak leaders, and succumbing to the shenanigans to this day. No clear decision has been made and we are now staring at an abyss of intolerance. The stakes of saving Democracy could not be higher, and it hinges on an accurate understanding of events that are constantly challenging reality. A reality we can see with our eyes, and hear with our ears. The motivation is hardly subtle…and our responsibility as citizens is very essential.

Real liberty is neither found in despotism, nor in the extremes of democracy, but in moderate government. Alexander Hamilton, (American, Founding Father, 1757-1804