Picture yourself sitting in front of your TV to watch the Super Bowl. You’re excited and ready to enjoy yourself. However, when the referee calls the first foul, you’re on your feet screaming at your TV. You’re in shock because he has just called a foul against your team. The opponent was the one who caused the foul! As the game continues, you begin to realize that this is not a normal game. The referees keep making calls that don’t match what you’re seeing with your own eyes. You’re powerless. You’re angry. And you’re frustrated because they are cheating!
But, isn’t that what the Republican Party has been doing for decades? Instead of revising their policies, their primary M.O. has been to change the rules of the political game in their favor (i.e., cheat) in order to win. Their political survival is based on one principle: “The End Justifies the Means” (TEJTM).
The American public would be appalled if sports referees cheated. Yet, they ignore that standard when it comes to politicians who fail at their most important job: Defending and protecting the Constitution. In the last election, nearly half the country voted for Trump even though he spewed over 35,000 lies during his first time in office. Also, many Americans keep allowing themselves to be duped into believing conspiracies like “Stop the Steal”, which ultimately resulted in the January 6th Insurrection.
Increasingly, Republicans are targeting voting rights in order to skew voting results. Instead of using normal political tactics, they accomplish their goal of winning at all costs by using lies, conspiracy theories, and disinformation (i.e., TEJTM).
TEJTM comes in many forms, plus Trump and his cronies keep refining their tactics. For example, they have expanded their attacks on factors critical for the survival of our democracy. They keep stretching the boundaries of the Rule of Law, erasing moral and ethical boundaries, and trouncing on long-standing precedents. Additionally, they are doing everything they can to make people afraid, eliminate trust in government, and discourage Americans from working toward the greater good. Another example: The Trump/Miller/Vance triumvirate has shown their complete disregard for normal behavior by doubling down whenever there’s a controversy. Instead of decency and empathy for the Good family and Minnesotans, ICE raided a high school the day after the death of Renee Good.
By spreading doubt and creating false narratives, Trump and his sycophants have been able to continue acting in unreasonable and dishonest ways, without any accountability (i.e., TEJTM). Every new controversy that they create means that newscasters spend their time on the most recent topic instead of the Epstein fiasco, the Venezuelan aggression, tariffs, the constant assaults on democracy, etc., etc.
Now, a new wrinkle has been added to their bag of TEJTM tricks. If you heard Vice President Vance’s tirade about the shooting in Minnesota, his rant was a perfect example of a classic mind-bending technique straight out of George Orwell’s “1984”. Vance’s intent was to convince you that what you saw with your own eyes and heard with your own ears was not what you saw and heard. The purpose of that kind of rhetoric is to twist your mind into a pretzel by pretending that the truth is not to be trusted. [Note: If you haven’t read “1984”, it’s a “must read”.]
To counter Vance’s false narrative about the killing of Renee Good, consider these questions:
1) If the officer who shot her had already been in one incident in which he was run over by a car, is he accident prone? Is he an excessively aggressive individual who injected himself into the scene unnecessarily? Does he have poor judgment (i.e., is he so stupid or so careless that he casually put himself in front of a vehicle with its engine running)?
2) Why was he even on duty — with a gun — if he is experiencing trauma from the other incident?
3) How many of those nasty, unprofessional, masked ICE agents are former January 6th felons hired by Trump and Miller?
