TPM’s Josh Marshall cautions against despair as we contemplate a Trump presidency. He acknowledges that the man and the direction that he will take our country is clear and has been so for a long time — we don’t have to wait to let Trump reveal his intentions. We know they’re bad and only a fool would hope for something different from him. But Marshall suggests that the social and economic conditions necessary to foster the success of those intentions may be lacking:
Consider how much millions have done to preserve democracy in countries that have little heritage of democracy, few protections for democracy, no robust system of courts, press, and so forth. And then think what all Americans can do now. I just see no excuse for sulking or any feelings of powerlessness or resignation. This is America. It's not Russia. It's not a crippled and embryonic democracy in 1920s Germany. This is America.
Yesterday, though, Trump delivered a speech that pretended that our democracy was indeed crippled, the already infamous “American carnage” speech. Although prior to inauguration day, Trump implied that he was busy writing the speech himself — and even posed with a pencil or some such writing implement in hand — we have learned that the speech was actually the work of his Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and his Senior Advisor Stephen Miller.
Bannon, a not so closeted white supremacist, a.k.a. ethnic nationalist, was Trump’s campaign manger and presumably helped set the angry, demagogic tone that characterized the campaign rallies and that surfaced again in the inauguration speech. Miller, for his part, authored many of Trump’s campaign speeches and understands how to effectively harness the fear and racial resentment that characterizes a sizeable subset of Trump’s supporters.
Bannon stands so far outside any American political tradition that when he was named to his White House position, even Republicans were“outraged”; a “leading GOP strategist” fumed that “the racist, facist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office.” Given his resume, it’s a fair supposition that Bannon is familiar with the use of “big lie.” The big lie was an essential propaganda technique employed by Hitler who, according to Wikipedia, described it in Mein Kampf as a lie “so ‘colossal’ that no one would believe that someone ‘could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.’”
And voila. The American Carnage speech is a tried and true example of the big lie — but with a twist. There is no “American carnage.”The economy may not be all roses, but it’s solid, especially when compared to 2008. Long stagnant, wages have even started to rise. Contrary to Trump’s claim, crime is down. We have room for improvement — always — but our situation not bleak.
Things are in flux, however. Globalization and increasing automation have altered manufacturing. Jobs have changed, become “upskilled,” leaving less educated workers out in the cold. Unions have grown weaker, contributing to the long-term trend of stagnating wages. Added to the insecurity such changes produce, the country is changing demographically and culturally. We are growing browner, more socially diverse, and old shibboleths are fading.
Bannon’s strategy is to capitalize on the understandable anomie generated by a changing world and magnify it via the big lie. The rhetoric is meant to fan the flames; fearful people are easily led. Marshall contends that the dire conditions that led to the rise of fascist European dictators like Hitler and Mussolini are lacking in the U.S. today and he is right, but Bannon, via the rhetoric he feeds Trump, is attempting to substitute the illusion of those conditions in order to intensify the emotional climate essential to authoritarian control. If we believe that we’re going to hell in a handbasket, for all practical considerations, we might as well be.
It is no accident that Trump and his apparatchiks, have so far ignored the massive turnout of anti-Trump marchers on Saturday, and, instead, devoted the lion’s share of their public communications to attacking and disrespecting the press. You’ve got to work at maintaining he illusion that you wish to create and a free press can undermine the control that such a goal demands. Goebbels, Hitler’s propagandist, asserted that repressing truth is concomitant to the big lie:
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it, [...] It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
The truth is that our country had started to recover from the Bush-recession of 2008 and the years of war that the Bush-Cheney cabal brought us and the last election found us at a juncture. We could have gone forward to attempt to build on the incomplete progress of the Obama years which were characterized by incessant Republican obstruction. Instead, thanks to the skillful manipulation of fear-based politics, Trump’s campaign apparatus was able to cobble together a coalition that in victory promises to take us on a disruptive, downwards path.
The inauguration speech foreshadowed the themes we should expect for the next few years — lies and more lies, until they aren’t lies any more and we experience a real American carnage. Of course, if the lies stop working or if, as yesterday’s marchers might imply, they don’t work when they have to reach beyond the base, there was an even more ominous promise in his subsequent speech to the CIA:
Trump gave the speech today at the CIA headquarters in Langley, and he made his views on Iraq abundantly clear. He started off by repeating his campaign lie that “I wasn’t a fan of Iraq. I didn’t want to go into Iraq.” He then went on to offer the bizarre rationale for wanting to steal anotaher nation’s resources by claiming that “If we kept the oil, we wouldn’t have had ISIS in the first place.” Then he admitted it had nothing to do with ISIS: “The old expression, to the victor belong the spoils.” Finally, he dropped the bombshell: “We should’ve kept the oil. But, okay, maybe we’ll have another chance.”
In other words, Donald Trump informed the CIA today that he may start another Iraq War just to take the oil, and he did it in exact words, and he did it front to television cameras.
When everything else fails, war can get the patriotic impulse to obedience working overtime. Of course, a big time terrorist attack might work just as well. Just ask Donald Trump’s sponsor, Vladimir Putin.