The Lies Were Always the Point
If Adam Serwer is correct and the cruelty was the point for Trump’s Republican Party from 2016 to 2020, then post-2020, it is possible that the lie has become the point. Incubating, amplifying, and polishing lies is now the full-time occupation of much of the GOP. Faced with the choice between governing and lying, they have decided to be purveyors of fiction.
Back when Donald Trump was the main one telling lies and his boosters were scrambling all around him to make it so, there was a certain comic quality to it all: What was the point in distorting weather maps or crowd sizes just to flatter a weirdo narcissist? Experts in authoritarianism were warning that this type of manipulation was how strongmen cling to power, sure, but it seemed easy enough to push it away and assume that once he was no longer president, the persistent flattery and adjusting of reality for his benefit would stop. But it’s now clear that the falsehood itself is the endgame. As historian Timothy Snyder cautioned after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, “When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions.” That’s why debates about whether Trumpism can exist post-Trump or why the GOP has refused to abandon Trump miss the point. The point is that the GOP has abandoned truth. Trump himself is ancillary to that move.
The temptation has always been to try to sort the Trump lies into the hilarious ones and the pernicious ones, but that, too, misses the point. If the lying itself is the objective, the difference between the clueless whopper and the sly distortion is immaterial; in fact, the clueless whopper can be more potent because it offers up greater spectacle and affords more opportunity for performing loyalty. As recently as the second impeachment, the clueless whopper—about peaceful protesters and false flag antifa activists at the capitol—lived largely in the fever swamps. A few months later, it is being parroted by Trump and members of the Senate. The Big Lie, however absurd it might be, can overtake reality so fast the only trick anyone need master is the patience to ride it out. That means the only strategy needed for liars is to repeat the lie. Trump, who had little mastery of most skills, was always a wizard at this move.
For years, Trump used the phrase “many people are saying” to essentially mean “someday people will be saying.” He did so understanding that if you say such things enough times, someone somewhere will parrot it as a fundamental truth, and then your initial statement will be true(ish—many people will be saying the untrue thing). “Many people are saying [this lie]” was always code for “if we get people to say [this lie], it will seem true.” Trump’s admission of that principle at CPAC on Sunday gave away the game. He confessed, about polling numbers, that “if it’s bad, I say it’s fake. If it’s good, I say, that’s the most accurate poll perhaps ever.” The lie thus goes from a fiction in the lizard brain of a dangerously delusional man to headline news to gospel for people who have been trained to invert whatever they see from the news. In which case why wouldn’t Rudy Giuliani advise Trump on election night 2020 that he should simply lie and claim victory? That had been the game all along.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-lies-were-always-the-point/ar-AAM7shH?ocid=DELLDHP&li=BBnbfcL
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