It’s amazing, how Trump has transformed the GOP into his own image. True, it is occasionally riven ideologically between extreme far right and merely mildly racist conservatives, and between evangelical hardliners and Wall Street bankers. But Trump has an intuitive sense of how to play each against the other to enable his complete dominance.
Trump is not benign, but we could wish he was less effective. Trump is an ignorant, arrogant, misogynous know-nothing, harking back to the pre-civil war Know-Nothings; he is mean, sexist, racist, cruel and of course, a liar, sometimes consciously and sometimes he’s just not concerned with truth.
Unfortunately, he is a propaganda genius. He doesn’t just lie with abandon, he lies with purpose: to paint the world through his eyes, not the way anyone else might see it—that is, if they weren’t looking through his lenses. But his lies are truly the way he would like things to be, even if they aren’t. And, he seems capable of persuading many that his view is reality.
Any conflicting story is, obviously “fake news.”
Gary Kasparov, the Chess Master and political activist tweeted: “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”
Trump has been quite successful in doing that.
Trump’s famous phone call with President Zelensky was “perfect,” he’s claimed, over and over again. He didn’t do anything wrong! It’s the Democrats who are guilty of a cover up—a conspiracy against him in the 2016 election, which he’s sure was cooked up in Ukraine.
So, he, and then, one by one, almost all Republican politicians, parrot this story, whether they believe it or not. Many probably want to believe it, since Fox and Trump together promote it and sneer at Russian interference as “fake news.”
According to the intel establishment, the Ukrainian conspiracy theory is truly a fake story, authored by the Russians, of course. But then Trump and followers can dismiss this finding as a conspiracy of “the deep state.”
If everyone says what he’s saying; it must be true: Fox, Trump and their echoes are everyone, except lying Democrats, so it must be true.
All those “lying Democrats” are pushing a traitorous fake story, that Russia collaborated with, or was encouraged, by Trump, to spread false news, gather dirt on Hillary and even, to hack Hillary and the DNC.
All this is fake, because Trump and Fox News both say so.
It’s not hard to substantiate the Democrats’ version, however, since Trump publicly urged the Russians, on TV, to hack Hillary. Yet, still the GOP prefers the Ukrainian conspiracy story.
His pattern: before his critics can latch onto one lie, Trump’s uttered three more, and caused related controversies. All and each spread confusion, alienation and apathy. That’s his strategy: keep ‘em occupied and confused. And, crucially to Trump, focused on him.
Kill Suleimani and then retreat from war, while everyone is up in arms about preventing a war with Iran. Then Trump says: they’re standing down and goes on to something else outrageous, like abolishing the need for environmental review of major projects.
Trump came to the transformation of the Republican Party rather late. Gingrich and then the Tea Party, had carried it most of the way, so that, political scholars Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein wrote, in 2011-12, years before Trump’s first political campaign:
“The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” It’s Even Worse than it Looks.
This was in response to the 2010 election, in which the blue Obama wave had been transformed into a blood red tsunami, toppling state governments, gaining control of Congress, and positioning the winners so they could gerrymander state after state to their liking, given the redistricting required after the decennial Census that year.
The Tea Party coup, set up the GOP to be taken over by Trump. The two were made for and by each other. A perfect combination for an authoritarian takeover: a master propagandist and a party, already, “unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
Fox and Trump tell his followers and GOP incumbents a story, and they accept it—they’d better, if they don’t want to be “primaried”— and they defend it with as many lies as are necessary, or are fed to them.
So, the question arises: how is it even conceivable that enough Republican Senators to convict (14, plus the Chief Justice) would vote against Trump in the impeachment trial?
That would require a political earthquake.
However, if even a few “moderate” or “independent” Republican Senators (Collins, Murkowski, Romney and/or Rand Paul?) vote for conviction, after having held out for hearing witnesses like John Bolton, that would be as much of a win as the Democrats, or all of us on the opposition side, can realistically expect, because of the nature of both the post-Tea Party Trump GOP and of the political infrastructure they’ve created: wildly gerrymandered red districts and electoral systems that facilitate “primarying” by the Trump-controlled party.
Gerrymandered districts make it easy for Trump to control his elected base. Any deviation from absolute loyalty primes Trump and his people to threaten restive incumbents by promoting his radical supporters as challengers (offering ample campaign funds and personal support). That’s at least one reason why Republican Congress people and Senators slavishly follow the Trump line.
The real question: what will be the response by the electorate in November, 2020, of this inconclusive outcome: impeachment by the Democratic House and acquittal by the Republican Senate?
It will be important to keep the revelations made at trial before the public, if possible, and to find ways to publicize them that are not blatantly political.
A bipartisan, if failing, vote for conviction, (two or three GOP Senators voting for conviction) could make a big difference.
Trump’s own behavior could also make a difference. He seems to become more and more erratic as impeachment revelations keep coming.
In Outer Mongolia, in the 1920’s, the holy Hutukhtu (ruler and saint), was supported even more enthusiastically the more insane and outrageous he became from advanced syphilis.
Will Trump’s followers recognize his lunacy and turn on him? Will enough of those who are perennially undecided?
Our futures, and those of the planet, may lie in the balance.