After the 2016 election, cognitive dissonance hit hard, with everyone trying to rationalize what they were so sure was going to be true turned out not to be. It didn’t help that there had been maneuvering behind the scenes to make sure that Hillary Clinton was the Presidential candidate at the expense of Bernie Sanders. That may have been a better presidential race: Democratic businessman versus Republican businessman.
Cognitive dissonance came back a month ago stronger than before, fueled by Trump himself. “Stop the steal” was actually around in 2016, but as we remember, Trump preemptively started casting doubt about this election before it happened. “If I don’t win, it’s because there’s fraud.” Had he won, he would have boasted about how good the election process is. “I won so that means it’s right.”
Back in the 2016 race, Trump was demonized as The Next Hitler™. That’s part of why I voted for him then. I didn’t like the idea of being told, “You can’t like him because we say you can’t.” Another part is that’s a tactic that’s been played often in previous elections. “Imagine something horrible. If you vote for the other guy, it will come true and be even worse than that. But if you vote for me, it’s will be all peaches and cream and milk and honey and puppies and kittens.” MAGA, anyone?
While there hasn’t been anything on the level of people being sent to concentration camps, an argument could be made that Trump’s inaction towards the pandemic, including publicly downplaying it while privately knowing it’s serious, is going to result in more people dying than if the effort had been put into dealing with it, and in a way, that makes him responsible for those deaths. Trump’s used to dealing with battles and wars against people, mostly financial. He can maneuver, outwit, put spin on things to be in his favor and sling lawsuits against a person or a company to get what he wants. Not so a disease.
Since he can’t use his standard methods against a disease, he’s obsessing over the election. And while he’s desperately trying to find a miracle that will make him look good and look like a winner again, he’s losing against that disease. Might as well go play golf again at taxpayer expense for both the use of Air Force One and that he can charge the U.S. Secret Service for staying there as they guard him.
And while Trump didn’t become The Next Hitler™, his behavior does have parallels with what happened then. Holing up, denying reality, lashing out at people that are trying to tell him the truth, believing wunderwaffe (miracle weapons) would save him. A leader whose cause shifts over time away from that cause to be all about the person. There’s a few articles that are comparing this to fascism or a cult of personality, and how Republicans giving overt or silent support to Trump’s actions is like when Joseph McCarthy had the government and the people so afraid of Communism that he could wave a piece of paper and claim it had 130 names on it. Over a decade earlier, it was, “It’s all the Jews’ fault. Except you, of course, Eva.” Recently, it was, “It’s all the immigrants’ fault. A wall will make it all better.”
Edward R. Murrow’s concluding remarks on the first of two See It Now episodes about McCarthy were relevant then and they fit just as well today:
No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men—not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it—and rather successfully. Cassius was right: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”