In 1949, George Orwell wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future,” which is meant to reference how control of information can shape reality. Orwell was describing how the ruling party in a fictitious dystopian society would lie about the past in order to shape today’s reality and extend their power into the future. The power of raw, unbridled bullshit is a core feature and tenet of fascism. When fascists want something to be true, they claim it is; when fascists need something to be true to get what they want, they claim it is. Actual facts don’t factor into it.
On Saturday, the Republican party, which has slowly morphed into America’s party of open fascism over the last 12 years, again demonstrated the power of bald-faced lies when they acquitted Donald Trump — again. I was never confident that the Democrats could successfully convict Trump in the context of all that bullshit, but I was quite surprised at how quickly they failed.
Heather Cox Richardson’s post regarding the acquittal contains the usual optimism regarding what liberals like to call “our democratic institutions”. Her take is that the combination of A) voters beginning to understand that Republicans are simply lying about everything and B) the good results of Democratic party policies (manifested by Biden’s executive actions) will cost the Republican party further control in the midterm elections.
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No one sane will argue that HCR is factually incorrect or that her insights aren’t outstanding; however, her optimism and the possibilities that it encourages her to leave out are worth exploring.
When we have a regime change in the US, as we just did, it takes somewhere between one and two years for the effects of that change to make themselves apparent. The most obvious reason for that is that the budget for this year was created last year, so the “Biden” budget won’t even go into effect for a year. The other big reason would be that the federal government is an enormous machine with a huge amount of inertia behind it. It can’t turn on a dime.
Two years into the Trump regime we were starting to see a number of issues, particularly with the economy. Then, COVID-19 hit. Democrats are still trying to blame the Trump administration for the virus, but that’s an obviously simplistic narrative. Regardless of where the virus came from, it certainly didn’t come from Donald Trump. The more accurate narrative — that the Trump administration dramatically increased the death toll from COVID-19 — is (in my opinion) too complex for a public that largely still thinks socialism is bad (for example).
To be fair, it may be the cultural selfishness of the American people that was really the biggest factor in our ability to properly respond to the pandemic. The Trump administration’s response (simply denying that the pandemic was a problem) seems insane on its face, but might have been a smart (though cynical and horrific) tactic given how selfish Americans are. It’s an essential part of fascism for a good reason — it works!
Two years into the Biden administration, we will still be dealing with the horrors of the Trump administration’s failings, but it will look like it is Biden’s fault, just like Trump’s first two years of success were due to the Obama administration but he successfully took credit for it.
It’s entirely likely, then, that Republicans will be able to sell a very different, bullshit narrative: That the Trump regime was great for the economy, but that was all ruined by COVID-19, which is the fault of China, and now look at how the Biden administration is failing in its recovery plan. In a country where the most simplistic explanation tends to win, this seems like a winning narrative. This narrative will certainly work within the 38% of Americans who are living in the Republican bullshit bubble — there’s little to no possibility that they will escape from it.
If the Democrats achieve any major gun control legislation in the meantime, that will likely aid the Republicans even more.
It seems likely, then, that the Republicans can retake the Senate and perhaps even get control of the House of Representatives. From there, McConnell can continue his campaign of sabotage — something that was extremely effective against the Obama administration — and they can blame Biden (and the whole Democratic party) for “not getting anything done”.
From there, it is an easy next step to a second Trump term. Once he’s in office, Trump can claim that no court of law can touch him, and of course, the Republican machine will support that absurd claim.
How can Democrats avoid this terrible outcome? They can aggressively use every existing law to go after fascists — both outside the government and within it, including fascists who have broken the law while in an elected office. They will need to treat this like the war it is, so that media is flooded with a constant stream of stories about different elements of American fascism being held responsible for their actions. They’ll need to shift resources away from the war on poor people and the left to the war on fascism.
Americans must be able to see that there are fascists and that they are criminals. That part is obvious. However, they also must see the fascists losing because there is a significant portion of the American public that will side with the winner no matter who they are. I don’t think the Democrats are going to be willing to do this. Their instinct is to always try to make peace with the right wing because they are right wing themselves and they want to have the tools of authoritarianism at their disposal — and of course, the real left is a bigger enemy to the Democrats than fascism.