Reality Ain't What It Used To Be

The Big Lie has seldom been bigger

It really doesn’t matter which side of the political/ideological fence you happen to call home. If you watched the events of January 6th and didn’t see an assault on American democracy- an attempted coup- we have little to talk about. How anyone could watch the insurrection- let’s call it exactly what it was- without being horrified at what was a violent attempted coup mystifies me.

I can accept differences of opinion when it comes to politics, but we had an election in November. The votes were counted and certified by the states. The American people determined a winner. Yet the “SHE LOST! GET OVER IT!!” crowd from 2016 COULDN’T get over their guy losing fair and square.

There were ZERO problems/issues/discrepancies with the 2020 election…except for the ones created by the Big Lie propagated by Donald Trump and his sycophants. As Josef Goebbels once notably observed, however, all you really need to do for a lie to become the truth is to repeat it with frequency and fervor.

Now we have a Republican congressman saying that there WAS no insurrection, that it was just like any other tourist visit. Days later, a photo surfaced showing him helping to barricade the doors of the House chambers…as one does when tourists are in the Capitol, yeah??

There’s a cottage industry developing whose main export appears to be denial.

Denying that anything untoward occurred on January 6th.

Denying that thousands stormed the Capitol that day.

Denying that five people (including one Capitol police officer) died that day.

Denying that several police officers were severely beaten and wounded as they attempted to defend the Capitol.

Denying that several Republicans whipped up the crowd ahead of the storming of the Capitol.

Denying that Donald Trump and several Administration officials slow-walked the response to the insurgency occurring at the Capitol.

Now House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Mordor) is opposing the creation of a bipartisan commission to examine the events of January 6th. Why? Silly wabbit, because no Republican (save for perhaps Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger) really want to know the truth about what happened. If they learn the truth, they know they’ll then be expected to do something about it, which will make it extremely difficult to continue their current strategy:

Deny, deflect, lie. Deny, deflect, lie. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. And above all else, obey Donald Trump’s every thought, wish, and command.

Of course, Republicans are in a tough and, frankly, untenable position…though it’s one of their own creation and thus unworthy of sympathy. They’ve chosen to yoke their wagons to a two-time loser, an egomaniac/sociopath who cares only about his own political power and self-aggrandizement.

Donald Trump really does appear to believe that at some point, America will come to its senses and he will be restored to his rightful place as President-for-Life. He (and a good chunk of the 74 million ragebots who voted for him) remains convinced that he WON decisively in November and that Sleepy Joe Biden stole the election from him.

There’s no proof to back up this assertion, with almost 90 judges across the country laughing Trump’s lawyers out of their courtrooms. Despite this, Trump and his knuckle-dragging sycophants continue pushing the Big Lie. Why? Because Trump refuses to accept defeat…and because in every other aspect of his life, he’s been able to manipulate the outcome to his advantage. He appears to have convinced himself and his fawning groupies that it’s only a matter of time before he’s restored to the throne.

Unfortunately, while he may have succeeded in 2016 (despite losing the popular vote), he wasn’t able to lie, cheat, and/or steal his way to victory in 2020. No matter how many lawyers he turned loose on state elections boards, the results remained unchanged. Even personal calls to secretaries of states failed to result in the changed vote totals he so desperately sought.

Facts and truth can be terribly annoying and inconvenient things. The reality is that, no matter how hard you might try, you can’t change either one. Facts and truth are what they are. You can work to discredit them; that’s what propaganda and the Big Lie are for. In the end, all that does is erode people’s faith in facts and truth. It makes facts no less factual nor truth any less true.

We have a problem in this country, in that a solid majority of Trump voters fervently believe the Big Lie. They ignore the facts, the truth, and the evidence that supports it all in favor of what they WANT to believe…that their guy got screwed.

On January 6th, people died because of the Big Lie. America came damned close to losing its democracy that day. Who knows what would’ve happened had the insurrection been successful. Trump was still in office; he may well have…well, it didn’t happen, and I’d rather not go there. Let’s be thankful for that.

We- ALL Americans- should be thankful we didn’t have to find out the answer to that question…because it could’ve meant we’d be living in a very different America today. Think The Handmaid’s Tale…and you’re probably not far wrong.

I grew up believing that American democracy was bulletproof, that it was and would always be impervious to any threat from outside our borders. Of course, I never considered that the biggest threat we’d face might come from within.