“If you tell a lie big enough and keep telling it, people will eventually come to believe it . . . . The truth is the enemy of the lie.”
If there are any Donald Trump supporters who read history, they will recognize these words written by Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. During his four years in office, results compiled by the Washington Post (remember — the folks who broke the Watergate break-in story), show the Mar-a-Lago buffoon misrepresented or lied outright 30,573 times.
Despite his prodigious appetite for falsehoods, he sometimes stumbles and words that betray a semblance of truth escape from his potty mouth. As, for example, when he bragged publicly at Dordt College in Sioux City, Iowa: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any votes. OK? It’s, like, incredible.”
Well, while he never made good on this boast, he and his handlers have done yeoman work on spreading lies that are believed by many millions of his cult followers.
His tired claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election is a shining example of what Goebbels wrote. In a system governed by laws and not by one rich and powerful man, his piteous lamentations that he was robbed were given fair and open hearings before more than 50 judges at every level, right up to a conservative U.S. Supreme Court and his challenges were rejected unanimously as baseless and frivolous.
It is important to remember that many of the judges hearing these cases were Republican appointees, some even chosen by Trump himself.
His attempts to bully down a single secretary of state or election supervisor to support his charges of widespread cheating also proved fruitless.
So, having exhausted all legal remedies offered to any suppliant in a court of law, the would-be usurper’s last remaining recourse was to concoct an even bigger and much more dangerous lie. He now informed a fanatical base of supporters that the reason he was repeatedly rebuked was that all the judges, all the juries, all the election officials — even his own Attorney General William Barr — were part of a giant conspiracy to deny his rightful ownership of America.
Thus was created the myth of the Deep State. As is the case with all such amateurish efforts to weave conspiracies and blind the public to the truth, no effort is made to describe, in detail and with precise evidentiary references available to all, the exact description of this sinister Deep State.
It is enough that the phrase conjures powerfully emotional responses. Similar, I imagine, to “Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Fuhrer!”
In support of his biggest of big lies, all Trump and his lickspittle followers point to the very fact they lost every legal challenge is proof enough of the existence and power of this secret cabal.
And what is the nefarious purpose behind all these rulings and sworn testimonies? To overthrow the rule of law and governance under the Constitution? Well, not exactly. These, after all, are the very people who, with fastidious faithfulness follow the laws that have governed our country for more than two centuries.
Well, if the Deep State has an agenda (and, with support of the magnitude alleged by Trump, there must be an agenda), and the agenda is not subversion of the rule of law, what is their agenda?
Simple. This huge conspiracy, woven out of sight, has but a single goal — to deny one man what he claims is rightfully his.
As Goebbels predicted, repeat a lie enough times and people will believe it. Millions upon millions of American voters have swallowed it hook, line and sinker. For those who control the fate of the Republican Party, not only was an election rigged, but the entire democratic process has fallen under deep suspicion.
As any political scientist worth his salt will tell you, when established governments lose their claim to legitimacy, only anarchy or an authoritarian clampdown result. The French and Nazi revolutions are clear examples of both.
It is difficult to see how a venerable, respected political party like the GOP, once it has sold its conscience for power alone, without regard to verifiable truth, can ever regain its bearings.
The time for Republicans — inside Congress and out — to regain their moral compass has passed. All that remains — if Trump is successful in regaining the White House is a deism looking more like la Cosa Nostra than the Republic crafted by Jefferson, Madison and Washington.
If Trump fails, he will once again drag down the party he heads, this time into disgraced disarray from which it may never recover.
And American public life will be much the poorer because of it.
McGehee, a lifelong activist, settled here in 1973 and lives in Palouse with his wife, Katherine. His work life has varied from bartender to university instructor to wrecking yard owner.
