By now it’s obvious to those who can see that we are in the midst of an openly fascist attack on democracy, civil liberties and inconvenient facts, truth and sound reasoning. Republican Party big lies are brazen, being completely contradicted by real facts. Nonetheless, the lies are repeated thousands of times by both cynical, knowing elites, and by the deceived and betrayed rank and file. Decades of divisive Republican Party dark free speech has finally torn this country apart.
What the Republican rank and file believe is reality and what they think about it is of great interest. That drives behavior. It is powering an openly fascist political movement that just might topple democracy and gut the rule of law and civil liberties.
The Dystopian Myths of Red America
Desensitization is an amazing thing. At this point most political observers simply accept it as a fact of life that an overwhelming majority of Republicans accept the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen — a claim with nothing to support it, not even plausible anecdotes.
What I don’t think is fully appreciated, however, is that the Big Lie is embedded in an even bigger lie: the claim that the Democratic Party is controlled by radical leftists aiming to destroy America as we know it. And this lie in turn derives a lot of its persuasiveness from a grotesquely distorted view of what life is like in blue America.
Urban elites are constantly accused of not understanding Real America™. And, to be fair, most big-city residents probably don’t have a good sense of what life is like in rural areas and small towns, although it’s doubtful whether this gap justified the immense number of news reports interviewing Trump voters sitting in diners.
But I’d argue that right-wing misperceptions of blue America run far deeper — and are far more dangerous.
Let’s start with the politics. The other day The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel, reporting from the campaign trail, noted that many Republican candidates are claiming that Democrats are deliberately undermining the nation and promoting violence against their opponents; some are even claiming that we’re already in a civil war.
Some (many?) of these candidates have been winning primaries, suggesting that the G.O.P. base agrees with them. Actually, I’d like to see some surveys along the lines of those showing that most Republicans accept the Big Lie. How many Republicans believe that President Biden and other leading Democrats are left-wing radicals, indeed Marxists?
Relatedly, I’d like to know how many Republicans believe that Black Lives Matter demonstrators looted and burned large parts of America’s major cities.
On the domestic violence front, a study by the
Anti-Defamation League found that 75 percent of extremist-related domestic killings from 2012 to 2021 were perpetrated by the right and only 4 percent by the left.
Finally, about B.L.M.: The protests were, in fact,
overwhelmingly peaceful. Yes, there was some arson and looting, with total property damage typically
estimated at $1 billion to $2 billion. That may sound like a lot, but America is a big country, so it needs to be put in perspective.
Here’s one point of comparison. Back in April, Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, pulled a political stunt at the border with Mexico, temporarily imposing extra security checks that caused a major slowdown of traffic, disrupting business and leading to a lot of spoiled produce. Total economic losses have been estimated at around
$4 billion[1]; that is, a few days of border-security theater appear to have caused more economic damage than a hundred days of mass protests.
The fact is that a large segment of the U.S. electorate has bought into an apocalyptic vision of America that bears no relationship to the reality of how the other half thinks, behaves or lives. We don’t have to speculate about whether this dystopian fantasy might lead to political violence and attempts to overthrow democracy; it already has. And it’s probably going to get worse.
** Asking for positive feelings about capitalism and socialism seems inadequate to me. Neither capitalism nor socialism are defined. Who knows what definitions individual people have. It is possible, e.g., me, to have both positive and negative feelings about both. In my opinion, the question alone doesn’t shed much light on how people really feel. It is arguably misleading.
Qs: It is reasonable to believe on the basis of the current situation in American politics and society that decades of divisive, radical right Republican dark free speech is mostly responsible for (i) tearing American society apart (unwarranted distrust and animosity, belief in lies, etc.), and (ii) significantly subverting and corrupting normal functioning of the federal government?
Footnote:
1. In addition to the ~$4 billion in damage that the Texas border stunt cost,
one source reported that congress approved $521 million to pay for National Guard costs related to T****’s 1/6 coup attempt.
Another source reported that D.C. police costs related to the coup attempt were about $71 million.
Another ~$30 million was estimated for personnel and physical damage at the capitol building. Who knows what other economic and non-economic damages came from and are still coming from the ‘incident’ on 1/6? It was a fairly expensive but damaging little shindig.
