The lasting legacy of Donald Trump is that he’s taken his unique brand of puffery, exaggeration and flat out lies and poisoned American culture with it. And the GOP has gone right along with him, faithful lap dogs to the end, apparently oblivious to the fact that falsehood is not a foundation for anything of value, and cannot long endure.
It makes sense that the Republicans would embrace Trump’s lies, because angertainment is far easier than governing and doing a soundbite or interview on Fox News is easier than researching a topic or writing a bill. The GOP is filled with Trump clones right now, reality TV level personalities, who know nothing about government and have even less interest in learning. They’re there to tweet, and look good on Newsmax. Yes, Lauren Boebert, we’re talking about you. Unfortunately, if you listen to Christopher Krebs, the cybersecurity and infrastructure chief that Trump fired for saying that “the 2020 election was the safest in history,” this overall Trump-created situation is only going to get worse, due to AI and the deterioration of the information environment. This is a six-minute clip and that commentary comes towards the end. The entire clip is worth the listen, however.
That is sobering. Krebs is a man of intelligence and substance who was fired by a man of stupidity and pretense, and that alone is cause to wonder about the state of our culture. That’s the inverse of how things work in any kind of sane or normal world, which the Trump administration profoundly was not.
It’s crucial that the Big Lie be exposed and hopefully this will happen as the lawsuits at bar reveal more and more evidence and people like Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro continue to cooperate and admit the falsehoods they perpetrated and the damage they did.
I’m glad for Chris Krebs that he’s getting publicly vindicated like this. He was vilified by Trump and that was known from the outset. He went on 60 Minutes to say what he says here and more. But that doesn’t change the fact that he was fired from a high post which he worked very hard to attain and which he deserved. And for what? For telling the truth. For doing his job and making sure that the cybersecurity infrastructure that he was in charge of protecting was in fact protected and refusing to lie for Trump that anything was wrong with it.
Trump wanted Krebs to be a yes man and follow his lead. If Krebs had done so, think of the inconceivable damage that he could have done to this country. This is a repetitive theme, Trump attempting to recruit people into his criminal enterprises and then when the person doesn’t budge, firing them. He started most notably with James Comey, and Krebs was towards the last. And then of course Bill Bill and Trump sparred because Barr, who had been most cooperative during the Mueller investigation, suddenly turned coat and decided that he didn’t want to buttress the Big Lie.
2024 is going to be a challenging year for a lot of reasons. Trump’s legal woes are only going to multiple as all these cases go to trial and if Krebs is right about AI and the deterioration of the information environment, and I’m sure he is, then we may have the most confused and lied-to electorate in the history of this country turning out at the polls in November.
Krebs is right, the average person is busy making a living, driving on the freeway, marketing, etc. and doesn’t have the time nor inclination to do a deep dive on everything they see and hear. People internalize what they hear on the TV, radio or internet as fact. That’s how the birther conspiracy grew legs. Facebook lacked guardrails and as Joseph Goebbels noted, if you tell a lie a thousand times it becomes truth. That’s exactly what happened. The birther conspiracy went viral on Facebook and nobody debunked it. Then all the lies about Hillary in 2020 did the exact same thing, when Russian bots posed as the neighbors and shared what they “knew” about her.
So we are realistically going to see people going to the polls, having seen God knows what on right-wing or social media, and voting the way that they’ve been manipulated to vote, when if they knew the actual facts, they would vote another way. And that is terrifying. This is going to be an election, not of Republicans vs. Democrats but far more basic, of Truth vs. Lies. And how people vote will determine whether we continue as a democracy or fall to fascism.
That’s why I confront bullsh*t one person at a time. I bring up voting with all the folks I encounter. I TELL them to vote Democrat and see what they say. If I get some stupid crap, I confront it. Oh I know the experts say don’t do that…hold their proverbial hand yada yada yada…I’m sorry… I don’t have years to undo their stupidity. I point out the lies, how it hurts THEM, and not back away just because they argue. This is a goddamn WAR THAT MUST BE WON. In a war, all one solider can do is shoot one other solider at a time. I write slogans on my old truck and wait for nods of agreement or someone yelling at me. I yell back. Bring it on asshats. Oh, I’m not naive enough to think I will turn them around, BUT I’m not going to ALLOW them to be fascist traitors, knowingly or unknowingly without CONFRONTATION. Sometimes it works. When the protest over Silent Sam on the UNC campus was going on due to the removal of a confederate statue, I confronted a group of good old boys. I engaged them in a debate, without anger, and finally the leader agreed with me, after finding out this good old boy had a black daughter that deserved to grow up as his child does. I do look for common ground but sometimes there is none. Each of us wanting democracy to survive this dark time IS A SOLIDER. As Teddy Roosevelt once said, do what you can, where you are, with what you have. We have a year to save our country and our children. FEAR IS NOT AN OPTION! FACT!