Credulity

“If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country…” Donald Trump, interview in People Magazine, 1998.  

Credulity. It wouldn’t be credible to argue it only infects Trumpofoxians. Nevertheless, one sees far fewer obvious falsehoods coming from the online left than from the right. Cultivated credulity has created such a hermetic barrier between left and right that it looks impossible ever to find a way back. And whether or not it’s equally distributed (it’s not), the deliberate nurturing and propagation of it comes mainly from one side. 

Among liberal cable news partisans, there aren’t intentional liars like the stars of Fox “news” and the screamers of Limbaughland. Or Trump. Or foreign-based, online efforts to divide Americans and bring down our democracy by reelecting Trump; or, if it fails, to discredit the election.  

Last week’s column addressing Trump’s and Fox’s lies about antifa fell on deaf eyes, as usual. One Trumpist responded with pictures of so-called antifa members arrested in recent riots. He declined to supply the source, but I found it, and, surprise, it was a compendium of people charged in a Portland uprising a couple years ago, not a single one of whom was identified as antifa.  

Next came a link to an end-times website, posting about Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, CHAZ. Complete with mischaracterized pictures, it claimed “Antifa soldiers” had beat up a sidewalk preacher there, choked him as he cried out “I can’t breathe,” while onlookers jeered. Amazingly, it included video which showed he was being hugged, not choked or beaten. 

How credulous must one be to believe, despite evidence of the opposite? How mushy is the mind that accepts the horrifying but fabricated descriptions of CHAZ Fox “news” offloads, and not actual live feeds from local sources?  

Then, as darkness follows night, came assertions about George Soros funding antifa, and the tired claim that he collaborated with Nazis in WWII, and is now working to destroy democracy. Which, as one can learn from a moment’s searching of responsible sources, makes Trump’s coronavirus lies seem positively Socratic. 

Why and how Soros became bogeyman #1 for Trumpists isn’t mysterious, but given who he is and what he actually does to support democracy around the world, it’s credulity to the ninety-ninth power.  

In Trump’s greatened America, fifty-three Qanon believers are running for Congress: paranoid people who accept the stupefying conspiracy that Satan-worshipping pedophiles rule the world, possibly from pizza parlors.  

There’s more, like video of people screaming at city council meetings, convinced that wearing masks dangerously raises blood CO2 levels. Masked for hours almost daily, as a surgeon for decades, I … disagree. While cases surge, mask-eschewing Trump just announced the virus is “fading away.” What does it say if he believes that? What does it say if he doesn’t?  

“The breakup of the United States of America is already under way,” brayed a member of the Russian Duma recently, thus illuminating the real significance of America’s credulity problem: it serves the enemies of democracy, including Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and Trump. When Americans are unable to separate fact from fiction, those foes win and our republic loses. (tinyurl.com/2russia4love)  

Spreading disinformation to the credulous isn’t new, but Republicans like Newt Gingrich, Roger Ailes, Karl Rove, Lee Atwater, and now, Trump, weaponized it, flooding the zone with so many lies that people gave up calling them out. So successful is it that those adversaries recognized its potential to further their aims. Not only have they exploited widespread credulity to influence our elections, aided by Trump and his Congressional co-conspirators, they’ve convinced millions they haven’t. That’s meta-credulity. (tinyurl.com/fake2u)  

Education, to which Republicans refer as brainwashing, is a powerful antidote to credulity. Equally potent are the workings of a free and skeptical press, which is why Trump calls it “fake news.” For too many currently in power, too much depends on keeping credulity alive. And too many Trumpophiles welcome the slumber of its comforting embrace.  

Trumpist credulity now faces its biggest challenge. Confirming everything Trump’s impeachment exposed, and more, John Bolton’s book has discharged a Foxotrumpian effluvium, enjoining the credulous to deny or excuse the malversation to which he bears witness. (Which is it? Lies, or classified?) 

During the impeachment trial, Senate Republicans cravenly refused to call Mr. Bolton. Do terminally credulous Trumpists finally understand why?  

Oh. Almost forgot: that Trump quote, still around, is fake. 

It's Not Antifa

After eighteen-thousand documented false statements from our “president,” you’d think everyone would assume he’s lying until proven otherwise. You’d be wrong, of course.  

Repeated endlessly, amplified by a carefully-crafted network of media propagandists, Trump’s lies are gobbled like manna, leading para-Trumpists to conclude there’s no downside to lying. “My attitude was get it done, but I didn’t say, ‘Go do it,” said William Barr, about the attack on peaceful protestors at Lafayette Square. Pepper spray isn’t a chemical, he added. Like Mueller found no crimes. From Trump and adjacent, lying is Plan A. Here’s the perfect example: “Antifa.”  

Short for anti-fascist, the term described various groups in post-war Germany dedicated to preventing fascism from rising again. Connected loosely, if at all, they were, in essence, detectives, looking for leftovers from the Reich. People who wanted to preserve freedom and democracy from fascism. The idea naturally spread to America, where, until Trump, Nazis were disliked.  

Raise your hand if you know what Antifa is here; its headquarters, its command structure, its membership requirements and how many it has. Do you know how to pronounce it? Are you sure all demonstration disrupters are Antifa? Keep your hand up if you believe it’s more dangerous to democracy than white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Boys, the KKK. Have you seen Antifa members recruiting here, like Proud Boys are? Are you okay with the use of military spy-planes over American citizens? 

Omitting the aforementioned rightwing gangs of “very fine people” who actually do have structure, recruitment, funding, and nationwide reach, Trump has described only Antifa as terrorists. Based on a report by a Russian operative working for a Russian propaganda network and carried on more-Trumpist-than-Fox OANN, (which looks a lot like “ONAN”) he even suggested the old man (my age) who was pushed by police is “possible Antifa,” and implied his skull-cracking fall was a gravity-enhancing “setup.” Not the first of Trump’s Russia-sourced conspiracies.  

As Trump lurches ever further from his rocker, his confabulations are exploited online by entities posing as Antifa, announcing non-existent plans for violent invasions into white neighborhoods. One such deceiver has been identified as the white nationalist cabal “Identity Evropa.” In Snohomish, Klamath Falls, across the nation, the deceived show up, armed and drinking, which isn’t dangerous. When the fabricated invasion doesn’t happen, what so proudly they prance.  

Contrary to Trump’s and Barr’s assertions, no one arrested in the current chaos has been identified as Antifa, whereas the presence of white supremacists and other rightwing agitators has been confirmed. The consequences of these “presidential” lies are grave. Inflamed by Trump, Barr, fascist-flirt Senator Tom Cotton, and Fox “news” saying the appropriate response to peaceful protest is sending in the troops, citizens are driving into crowds, grabbing long guns from their trucks and threatening to shoot. Doing it, in some cases. Even here, on Capitol Hill.  

It’s not hard to believe this is exactly what Trump intends. Accustomed to lying or cheating or blaming his way out of personal responsibility for his entire life, he’s becoming increasingly desperate for something, anything, by which to regain traction. To help you ignore his serial failures and the flood of generals and admirals finally calling him out; even stirrings among Republicans.  

From his depleted trick-bag, Trump chose the worst, which is to say the most Trumpian, option: turn citizens exercising their First Amendment right of assembly, petitioning equal justice from their government, into the enemy; get Trumpo-Americans exercising their Second Amendments rights to believe, and unleash the hounds of Hell. Seeding the civil war he has all but called for, should he be unable to suppress enough votes in November.  

After Trump’s third-world-dictator attack on peaceful protesters, sending his message of “domination,” Americans are fighting each other. Convinced all demonstrators are “Antifa,” which, it’s been shown, comprises virtually none of the protestors we’re seeing, Trumpists feel empowered to threaten their lives, spewing Trump-endorsed rage at fellow Americans advocating liberty and justice for all. This may be his most dangerous, anti-American lie of all.  

Meanwhile, as he pretends Antifa is our foremost enemy, Trump is precipitously and without consultation reducing our troops in Germany. This pleases Putin, who’s moving forces to his western border. What election help, and more, one wonders, has Putin has promised in return?  

To salvage our democracy, it’s November or never.  

For those interested in discovering what Antifa is and is not, these links are a start.

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