The Legacy of Lies and the American Denial of Shared Humanity

We should not be surprised by the Republicans' moral treason that seriously undermines the very foundations of American democracy. We have only tacitly admitted and made law the notion that all citizens have a right to vote. The real problem is that we have never in fact accepted the humanity of all citizens. As noteworthy and horrified as we are by events this week, the deeper and more disturbing issues are not unfamiliar. The lies and the racism are of a piece.

Facts need to be resilient and human-made, which means you could be wrong. They need to be tested and hard-won by method, evidence, and credibility. I've been thinking about the worst legacy, the most dangerous lasting effect of Trumpism. It's the lies. 

Welcoming, embracing, indulging, excusing, dismissing, and devolving into a culture that denies the facts, rejects the power of truth, and decides for the lies. This happened everyday of this administration and everyday it was worse until we finally saw the _complete_ dissolution of the Republican Party with its rejection of democracy and indulgence of their pathological leader.

There is one thing, however, that Republicans are not lying about. This is their disdain for democracy when the people vote. But let’s make this clearer. Republicans reject democracy when Black people vote. Their racism is explicit, shameless, and pointed—it is directed at a very specific outcome because they reject the citizenship, the rights, the humanity of Black people.

It is not only fear of the Trump base that motivates the elected Republicans to commit treason. It is a deeper hatred that has never been addressed seriously, an inhumanity they vociferously deny because they refuse to admit the truths of history and prefer to marinate in their own lies, their own denials. What they offer is nothing less than an unconcealed contempt for certain voters—again, what is at stake is not merely the process of democracy but democracy itself and, more importantly, our shared humanity.

What was endorsed was nothing less than overturning an election because certain voters are not regarded as human beings. unfit for citizenship because of who they are. This is beyond mere moral contempt. It exhibits the very worst inclinations of a racist state. We can only say that this is overstated because we can question whether 70+ people, including many who are not white, cannot be voting for racism. But we can say that the vast majority of these voters not only favor overturning an election so long as it is not their elected officials.

Do freshly elected and reelected Republicans mean to disavow their own election? Of course not. So racism doesn’t have to be the stated cause nor ever admitted to be a cause for their votes but the claim that votes themselves are illegitimate is not merely procedural. Those votes are meant to be overturned because of who cast them. To use procedure—votes were cast that violated the rules of voting—is nothing but another lie. To see those who would overturn the election as anything less than wholly complicit in racism is to be in denial of their stated goals.

The election is “illegitimate” because they cannot abide the voters, no matter how they voted and by whatever method. The procedure and the method of voting is the lie they tell to cover their claims about “legitimacy” of human beings.

The poison of the lies is coupled to the kind of moral failure that may have no remedy. For the country this is moral treason to the very idea of democracy itself and, worse, an indulgence of the original sin of its founding. However, that so significant a portion of the America populace is willing to undermine the values of democracy should not surprise us. While we find this dangerous, disheartening, and a real threat to our future, it is as much a reflection of a nation that has never actually treated everyone as human.

Hey Joe

The Biden Agenda


Hey Joe, Hey Joe (said now)
Where you going to run to now?


Joe's instincts are to run to the middle and make a deal if he can. The reason this was once an idea that could have some value is that we have lived in a deeply divided "country" of States since the founding of the republic. If you want to govern you have to bring along those deeply opposed to change, the religious, and create coalitions of uneasy partners, and that's on _your own side_. Your opponents will do everything they can to defeat you at every single moment. The idea of unity is somewhere between a fiction and a "political belief," which is a euphemism for useful but sure to fail lie.


Democrats will form their circular firing squads in no time at all. Take, for example, Obama's latest remarks: he is always utterly sensible but not always effective when seen in juxtaposition to his equally necessary but ineffective claims for unity and the arc of justice. There is no arc of justice and neither are we going to be better unified just because Joe is pleading much the same case.

Mitch will see to that, especially after Republicans win in Georgia no matter how explicitly foul or inept they are in running for office. Remember the inveterately decent Doug Jones couldn't hold on in Alabama to a malignantly ignorant football coach who doesn't know there are three branches of government. Being capable or wise or having a history of decency really doesn't matter much at all.


In American politics you have to lie about "coming together" just to advance the pace of a livable-hypocrisy and slow the incipient violence right below every surface. Americans only care about money and their own interests, making us neither special nor particularly different from others.


Our exceptionalism is more clearly founded on our unwillingness to learn from mistakes and evolve, much less work with our shadows (particularly the legacy of slavery, racism, and bigotry). Republicans before willfully condoning their path to being now the anti-democratic Fascist Party used the capitalist brand as the acceptable cover for unconflicted selfishness and white supremacy.


So if Joe were reading this, I would tell him to do a few things to make this brief respite from fascism and climate suicide worthwhile.


First, continue with the full-throated unity message not only because he sincerely believes it but because it's wise politics. It may be bullshit in practicum but that never matters.


Next, undo, repair, and work to fix as much damage as possible with the same ruthlessness that Trump and Republicans use to ruin the world. That executive pen needs to flow every single day, persistently, quietly, but above all ruthlessly. And then when Republicans scream, do not cower, apologize, or explain. STOP EXPLAINING. Just do it and then brag about it louder and louder every time the fascist racists complain, demagogue, or posture.


Further, expect no help from Democrats and expect only obstruction and failure from Republicans. You will be without control of the Senate---because Georgia will once again prove that it is really South Carolina, I am predicting big wins for Loeffler and Perdue, despite the better candidates, the money spent, the whole brilliant effort, despite the Republican disarray, ineptitude, incompetence, and venality, it's going red. Thus, Mitch. And that means the entire country is held hostage to the real power of this one evil man, the Grim Reaper.


So you must speak out of two sides of your mouth. First, preach unity and bipartisanship but expect nothing from Collins or Romney, who will fall in line with McConnell. Second, denounce McConnell every single day for what he is. It won't matter because Mitch don't care and will do whatever he wants. He is the power you don't have, Joe, and there is nothing you can really do about that. Win the Senate in 2022? By then you're likely a lame duck. But fight the fight with kid gloves to Democrats and with utterly ruthless fury against Republicans.


There's not much we can do to stave off the climate change suicide. Profit and stupidity will prevent that. The Green New Deal is as likely as defund the police is stupid sloganeering. But you can bring a few years of decency and make the clarion call louder every day. That would be good.


Joe, you likely have even fewer years left than I do. I mean, I'd like to say I have 20 or so, hopefully with my wits. So let's make this a bearable time even if we know we're going to get little help from our friends and nihilism from our opponents. Maybe we can enjoy some sunny days this coming summer if you can persuade Americans to get the vaccines. Good luck with that too.

A Tale of Two Narratives (Hint: Keep choosing the sane one, even if you're not sure.)

You might think that he'd figure out that his lawyers aren't very good at this or maybe, just maybe he really did lose. But he knows he's gone because he means to do as much damage as he can on the way out---evidence for the expedited arson is already in hand.


The story in semiotics and actions belies the goofy Twitter rhetoric, which however contradictory is part of the usual chaos pathology. Nothing but attention will do and there are only those that praise and the enemy. That'd obviously be us but it's always better to hit closer to home, especially when elected Republicans and judge appointees are dismissing your cases and ridiculing your claims.


When do the lawyers get the rap? Say, Rudy too? Or does Rudy stay to become part of the act? He looked bad with that hair dye make up thing but he might still want to be a useful idiot---there's so much money to be made for both. Stay with the cash, there are so few fingerposts that to follow the madness and impulse. The grift is on, not that it's ever off. Ther is serious money to be chased from those dupes.

To tighten the circle is not to lose the dupes, which is why the rest are treasonously silent---like nearly all the remaining Republican Senators. They want Georgia and if they just shut up and don't aggravate the dupes they will win both. Reality doesn't matter, results do. They're confused with what to do but have every reason to believe that he holds the power over voters they can't live without.

Of course, the Lincoln Project vows they will never forget but didn't he get 7 million MORE votes this last time? Fox has learned that you can make a lot of money with 40% of the country watching you. Majorities are just inconveniences that can be fixed with gerrymandering and other minority-rule devices, like Mitch himself.

The small type articles in The NYTimes are chronicling the packing of agencies, expedited schedules, attempts at irreversible policies and positions. It would be merely tiresome and annoying were it not tantamount to sedition (or is it treason?) and it's long term damage. Imagine if the 45th President of the United States actually, as is rumored, holds a rally _during_ the inauguration of the 46th? Which banana republic would that make us? Oh, this one?

So his behavior tells us he does know but the rhetoric, as is always the case, need not represent any fragment of truth so long as it foments more chaos, attention, and loyalty from the dupes. There are a lot of dupes whose money will soon flow regularly to Fearless Leader and that seems to be the core of the plan. He's gonna need a lot of cash both for debt and lawyers 'cause they're coming and soon.

In between raucous bouts of archaic Sanskrit, I listen most closely to the voices of Michael Cohen, the convicted lawyer, and the old Obama pair of Plouffe and Axelrod. Cohen has this once contrite and vindictive temperament that does nothing to make you like him more but he does seem to me to have a bead on Trump's psyche. No one else calls the Donald better for reading the inside out: Cohen knows that Trump is about money and winning and predictable if you know where to look. It's that lack of the later thing that's causing less of the other thing that's gonna be the biggest problem for Mr Trump if ya' follow then follow the money, always, got that?

The grifting enablers are close behind. The Obama adviser types inhabit a number of subsphere echo chambers but on blogs they drop f-bombs and feed on candor root. (Who knew? Are there candor root smoothies yet? Sounds, I dunno, yogic.) They keep you apprised of how the enablers and dupes are taking it and the scary mofo politics that is undermining small things, like the actual republic and democracy. Comforting, right?

Cool about Joe is that he is acting as if virtually none of Trump Insanity matters terribly much but for the damage it is doing. But that need not be said too loudly because Joe's whole schtick is that We the American People Can All Do This Together thing. He may well believe that. He may have to but he likely has to no matter what he feels 'cause pleading, even dissimulating some for the sake of hope is the exact opposite of the other guy. Never has the Two Narrative America been more exposed.

The difference between those two narratives is that Democrats care about the narrative because they are anything but unanimous over policies that will likely be achieved without help from Congress. Anyone sensible would think that we are in an age when "due order" legislation comes only under duress, that there is no functioning legislative branch because Mitch. Done.

I mean, there's a chance in Georgia but I think there won't be any split ballots and since when do white people do a good thing twice? If I won't take the bet does that make me cynical or just whispering 'cause Joe's messaging is the better even if he's wrong about any cooperation. He will get none, zero. No one will defy Mitch, much less Collins or even Romney. Does Trump still own their other choices?

This all suggests that we have actually made it to January 20th. Or can we say the 21st? Winter means we need to weather pandemic, holidays---whatever that means---political mayhem, scary economics, threats to world peace and world peas, shall I go on? I think we'd better talk about other stuff too, like poetry. Just to keep it real.

How the Cult Eats Its Own and Carries On

Tucker's Dilemma

We all know that they fear the Mean Tweet of Great Leader. You just never know too when you do something, anything, that might win you an insult, an accusation, might stick you with a blame or reprove you for some slight, some failure to be in perfect fealty and concord with His Wishes. You can end up forever condemned but it is more likely you will be used for some future purpose. Nothing need be lost when there’s only the next con, the next need met. 

You are always trying to read his mind, anticipate what you need to say to win his approval. And still he might take you down. Even if you are Tucker Carlson daring to ask a question that is supposed to be another softball, to your benefit because, you know, Tucker is always happy to explain for you, pander, apologize or justify in advance before there’s any serious ask. Don’t ask, receive. Don’t care what others ask or want, just state your own “truth” as the true. If (or is it when?) the backlash comes you will panic, that’s part of the deal, but it’s always possible to win yourself back into His Graces because you were never promised anything. Life makes no promises but the ones granted: this is crux of the matter and warrants some more consideration.

In Trump world there are no promises. There are only deals, advantages, winning, and then when the con or the failure gets too hot the reprisals, denials, and on to the next bullying. Was that him just joking, a tease to test out an impulse? Bleech to clean your virus? Did he mean it? What does “meaning it” mean? Not even Bill Clinton was this good at working the meaning of meaning. That’s because words are meaningless beyond the need to win the moment or own the libs: there is no past or future apart from the moment won, and now exists solely for the purpose of being won, dominated, spoken over, commanded. Why do people tolerate being treated this way? It’s because they are encouraged to take up the same. You too can be The Donald. Someday.

We can agree to ignore anything we don’t prefer and take “seriously” whatever we like when that’s exactly the offer of His Example. When things invariably go sideways because of the disconnect between claim and reality, that doesn’t need to pose a problem. If reality catches up you are still in good posture for grievance and abdication. It wasn’t your fault and that’s not impossible in a world that really doesn’t promise much we do control. Most of what will happen to us that we don’t prefer is well beyond our control.

Instead of the pious denouement that it was all God’s will---that previous way to excuse and provide a means of rationalization that gives power to those doing the forgiving---the new task is to command and reclaim the moment. God’s power is now your own. You aren’t subject but sovereign. Prosperity gospel here we come. You never have to be forgiven if you are in fact never wrong. Why appeal to the infallible when you can become the infallible? Has there ever been any other kind of “infallibility” than the one merely asserted?

So don’t worry if you are accused of usurping God, they never meant there was a real God anyway, only the one that let’s you tell us what He is doing through you. You are in charge, not reality. This is a vital step too in accepting the Great Leader’s ways because you want the same thing and he tells you to be like him, do what he does. Remember that the world is yours for the making. You want to be in command, no matter what reality is telling you, regardless of any evidence or facts. You need to be in command because otherwise the world will get you, others will rob you, everything you cherish will be taken from you. To stop them you must never relent in being right in this very moment. The reason nothing like reality or the facts or truth gets in the way of what you want is because you are free. Don’t Tread On Me. The Blue Line Support the Police Flag in the midst of this black versus white world. The evil ones are black and you aren’t. That gives you license to make justice and do what you need to stand your ground. You’ll get away with it. He does. Old Glory on the porch, in the yard, standing tall is telling you that yours is the cause of the patriot. The patriot embodies freedom.

He does whatever he wants whenever he wants it. If that takes money and time and privilege, well, The Leader is showing you that you can do it because he’s doing it. He not has your interests in mind, he represents your goals. So whatever you want, nothing is stopping you. Whether its guns or masks or violence when you feel like---whatever you can imagine or hallucinate, you really can get away with when reality is just whatever you say next.

The words you use can be meaningless or at any time dismissed or disavowed. They can just as easily be asserted and defended---the difference between meaning it and not is pure exigency. For weeks he might deride you or praise or damn you with both but nothing sticks but for now. Nothing will be remembered. There is no future that can’t be reinvented into another now. The world as you want it is yours for the insistence. Use whatever goad you have until the injury can’t be denied, until whatever you say “sticks”. Truth never matters, only what you say.

Now this kind of world must not be granted its power. For it is powerful, because it is not the truth that is powerful or sets you free but power that will take the form of your delusion, dangerous as that may be. We must all out the fakery, the lies, call for the facts, demand that reality presides at the trial of decency and that decency and, yes, truth is worth fighting for. Not because truth sets you free or wins in the face of falsity but because of what happens when we do not make truth an honest aspiration. Truth doesn’t rule the world, it serves honesty and decency and those must be choices we make in a world that neither cares or demands their being at all.

Where the Delusional Cult Goes From Here, And How We All Depend on Truths We Can Source

If the Trump Cult fails according to the template we can expect a transition of power---Biden will be President on January 20th and the insanity will have "lost," for now. It's not going to be that simple because in this case the cult is no small faction or isolate. It is now a major political party with millions of followers whose leaders offer fealty and act principally out of fear of reprisals. We will have to see what happens now that Tucker Carlson has strayed from the fold by asking for evidence in the face of belief and the Leaders assertions. 

The Cult won't break but it may in the face of its failure winnow some of its peripherals. The Leaders claims to victory now stand in direct contrast to stated claims and so there is going to be need of some revisionary thinking. After all, when Jesus didn't show up again and the world didn't end on time, they needed a new bumper sticker, some rebranding, and another story to scam. Trump will carry on with the deceit that he "won," which will never be denied. It need not be. Grievance has always been at the heart of the scam's explanation of any loss and eventually the lies will stick. The Cult will list his victories, claim they were cheated, but that they will rise again. This isn't going away. There is history here.

There can never be any admission of the facts, much less feelings of culpability or having been scammed. But there is some falling away in the numbers when the failure becomes potent enough to penetrate the emotional moats and parapets that have kept them "safely" locked inside the madness. This makes those still locked into the cult that much more fanatical. 

The sane Republicans have long left but the rest will not peel off until they no longer fear their own personal loss. They mean to survive with or without their Mad King and though the majority would rather be rid of him, that is not as important as maintaining power. With power comes the thrill and the grift, and whether or not they need the money, the grift is always a thrill. There is no interest but self-interest.

The powerful within the Cult know as well as we do that they need the Mad King's dupes. If the dupes don't show they can't win at all. They know how his wrath puts their self-interest in peril and what they must do to avoid that disaffection as far as possible. Mitch knows this better than all the rest. They will do whatever they must to stay in power at any cost and no moral treason or complicity with evil is beneath them. There are no principles or values so much as there is power to be used for whatever purpose it might to enrich themselves. They are thinking of their future and with that in mind it's easy to explain their vulgarity, moral turpitude and mendacity. 

The election may not be stolen as of today but neither will it have ever been won. That is Trump's accomplishment so long as half of the country is nothing better than his Cult. There is only one party that has any democratic values left, that plays as if the old rules and norms might still provide the facades of democracy. Republicans will continue the talk because they regard themselves the true patriots. The rest of us have no flags in our yards, no permanent yard signs for the causes of liberty, like guns and Jesus, and no right to govern after a fair election. We must now must face the fact that their claims of delegitimization are their new norm.

When Democrats win they couldn't have really won because nothing is true but what we believe by being told. This new paradigm isn't more than another version of the old one: democracy never actually mattered. . People like Democrats have no right to govern nor even to participate if that is possible. Notice the way it has unfolded even this cycle: suppress the vote, deny access, claim fraud and demand recounts, and when that doesn't work simply say that the votes shouldn't count and dismiss the entire process. We should recognize that none of these claims or values are new: the Trump Cult is a furtherance of the racist white nationalism we have known in America since 1619.

Who gets to rule has never really been in question, now has it? I'm not so cynical as to believe that there has been no progress. But I am realist to think that authoritarianism has always been an option if white power is in jeopardy. 

For now I think we can expect the remnants of the republic to survive. But it sure was close. Think for a moment what would have been unleashed had Trump won. I know, I know. But let's think of what this surviving will look like. The damage is to the system of values that likely determines the fate of the system itself.

Limbaugh laid out the mission plainly. He called it the four corners of deceit: government, academia, science, and the media. Repeat ad nauseam with conviction and bullying insistence that all of these sources of information and means to knowledge lack every legitimacy and, well, you have the Trump Cult version of the Republican Party.

Think for a moment how much a functioning society depends on these sources and institutions. Truth does not depend on you. You depend on the truth. All of these institutional ways of deciding what is true are flawed because they are human. They are all incomplete. They are all provisional in some way or another. All must admit mistakes and redress failures, errors, and serious sins of understanding, judgment, and character. But without them, we have nothing like social knowledge or the capacity for successful individual discernment. Without them all we have are individuals with opinions. Good luck with that.


The Cult will, like other cults, be forced for the moment to capitulate to the reality they can't completely bully, manipulate, or control. What usually happens next is that the Cult Leader retires to, say, her trust fund and the follower-core quietly regroups according to the new terms of insularity: they carry on as devoted as ever but with a new detachment from the world that has wronged them. This kind of defeat might promise a return to some previous normalcy since the cult has retreated back into its bunkers.

What happens when the cult is nigh on 70 million people? That's a religion. And the tyranny of religions are even more virulent, persistent, and dangerous. We should not expect the Republican Cult return to its previous religion. It's got a new set of "facts" now and it's going to be far more dangerous.
Democrats would be wise to take up two strategies given the fact that they are going to be reviled, thwarted, delegitimized, and hated. First, take the high road as Biden and Obama and the rest suggest. Why? Because we can stand for something better and should. We can't expect better from our opposition to whom we are the enemy. But secondly---and this is what Biden and Obama can't say for political reasons too---that our opposition is no friend to democracy's foundations, that it is opposed to truth itself, that it is willfully delusional. 

Limbaugh understood how to change the paradigm of a common discourse and so create an alternative world. We who must accept that our social facts work their way through institutions that depend on method, honesty, and character will be dealing with those who reject every bit of these truths. They reject not only the facts but what the very ways we believe facts exist at all. 

America's partisanship is not rooted in disagreements about policies of governance. We who voted out the Cult Leader have saved our souls for now. The quorum of the sane is not being ruled by a delusional demagogue. But half the country wishes it were. And that is the problem. They want the delusion, they prefer their prejudices, preferences, privileges and choices over anything that is said by government, academia, science, or the media. There are no such reputable resources of knowledge and there are no professionals working their human tasks with integrity.

We're in for a lot more of the worst of this pandemic---more social spread, less control of the disease and death---because half the country prefers their delusions. The other half includes those creating the vaccines that will allow the delusional to claim when it suits them that it was all a hoax. America isn't fighting for its soul so much as it will be fighting off the delusional whose desperation, ignorance, and willful copmplicities may ruin our fragile experiments with governance. Democracy demands social truths and half of us are denying they exist.

Disbelief as Asset and Vulnerability, Knowledge as Trust and Accountability

Rajanaka taught me to follow the evidence, be prepared to change my mind (not that anyone likes to do that), and look with askance upon certainty. Certainty is, after all, more dangerous than ignorance. Misinformation helps form the shadow of doubt when we are eager (for any number of reasons) or have reason to be particularly suspect. And we do have such reasons given how many times we've been lied to by people who put on reputation with the mantle of righteous.

I like to think that we are folks who like to ask questions, who use doubt creatively, and remember that information is human, can be revised, and is only as good as we are. We think of information as requiring responsibility for sources and methods but know we have to rely on others for much of that. After all, what do _you_ really know about the science of epidemiology? We need reputable others to be reputable.


I'd like to think we consider maturity an important feature to use experience as a guide, and then there are the critical skills and education we need to help us navigate _with_ doubt and experimentation as a feature of learning. It's no small matter sorting out what we feel, what we think we know, and what's true. Yes, there are facts too. We must learn with them in order to learn from them. This is not easy either.


I'd like to think we know well that we must trust and have confidence in people, even when they are bound to let us down---we're all human, and the best of us falter. So we fancy that we are not the believer types who lay down to authority but who know there's not much without confidence and accountability. On all of these matters we'd make good candidates for our own doubt-theorying becoming vulnerable to misuse or breakdown.


Having now received at least three replies to my note regarding critical thinking from offended Trumpist yogis I think we can safely say that their arguments are that our arguments are fake, based on misinformation and "the media." We are not being critical thinkers because our sources are defacto false.


It's not only that they are Fox or QAnon sourced---though that seems to be as much the case. Rather, it is a strain in yoga worlds, that seem to follow lines in other "progressive" worlds, that thinks the anything institutional must be wholly suspect or false. There is no _measure_ of doubt so much as there is only doubt and then there is certainty. Making uncertainty a feature of both is unfamiliar as is the importance of having clarity about the intelligence we all need to function.


Somehow facts can't exist if there are corporations or, say, pharmaceutical companies _only_ trying to profit by making you sick. (The anti-vaxxer thing functions as a trickle down delusion). The whole world can't be trusted but for "my" sources or tribe; the need to belong or the fear of expulsion work their own insidious alchemies on human decision making.


This may be a different _kind_ of suspicion rather than an extremist degree. We could posit that such a degree of suspicion would make more sense if it didn't go so far out into the wilderness. After all, we _are_ being grifted and robbed and misused and lied to---it's not like we don't remember cigarette company executives, so what makes FB or any other profiteer different? There is little doubt that people will use other people for any purpose. Sad, true, always a part of our concerns.


But it is the degree of commitment to unreliable sources coupled to how critical thinking does its best work what now sets matters apart. Professional journalists, doctors and other health experts, your neighbors counting votes---everyone is not to be trusted? Because there is a meme repeated by another source? First, one has to step further and further to the edge, to the place where _everything_ is suspicion and doubt. Critical thinking instead demands that we ask why we are suspicious and what is worth doubting. It's not "doubt everything"; it's how to learn about doubting so that you can get to the business of knowing.


Next, one would have to discredit all of the "mainstream" as something "other": can't trust "them." Now you claim your own sources, to which you are committed. What prevents unchecked avenues of disinformation when you believe _your_ sources but not the process, method, or people who are doing the work of accountability?


And that is the crux of the matter. Accountability, like doubt and truth, takes work, real work; it takes skills learned and cultivated so that we can understand that the world of experience is information that must be measured to be understood.


Rajanaka, if it is anything, is the commitment to cultivating the skills we need for a healthy intellectual, emotional, and ethical human experience. We may not always get it right because we are humans living in spheres of information that must acknowledge and create limits and boundaries in order to expand our efforts to know. But let us continue to try to learn, with hearts and minds at work.

Politics at the Altar of White Nationalism

The former Republican Party has made explicit that it's path to white nationalism is now complete. Strangely enough, the coup won't be Trump maintaining power over a duly elected President Biden. It will be that the only major political opposition to those who seek governance based on sane institutions and values of democracy has forsaken truth and democracy both. Alternative facts weren't new. They were the Trump restatement of the old snake oil that poisons truth itself with the cultic assertions of well-defined eco-system.

Why does the MAGA base believe Trump's tweet delusions and what keeps them going down this path? I think we can set aside the elected toadies in Congress and elsewhere for the moment: the only they care about is re-election. Their job is more important than the truth or their country: they fear the Leader. But why does the need for delusion cut so deeply?

The key is the link to evangelical Christianity and its long reach. Let us first remind ourselves that low information and the quality of information that envelops these communities and conversations is all they know. But even if there is more familiarity with other news, these claims and conspiracies are what they deem to be true. The rest is not only false but beyond the pale, the work of evil people committed to the end of their rightful Christian nation. Theirs is an entitlement: America is their white Christian nation and it is being lost.

Trump advances a newer version of the tired, fictional, deeply dangerous and corrupting Lost Cause narrative that fostered the post-Reconstruction effort to use grievance to resist obedience to (new) law or provoke any meaningful change. We have wildly underestimated the number of rural white people who have been taught to dismiss, scapegoat, and project their grievances on people of color and others perceived to be threatening to their status quo or entitlement to power. That kind of racist, nationalist fervor is deeply tied to the _ethos_ of Christian apocalypticism, _even for those who don't make a point of espousing such doctrine. The world is ending and the devil is at the bottom of it all. We must stop "them." Ours is the righteous cause.

My point is that one doesn't have to make this overtly religious---though even the most cursory look at the closed media and information spheres tells you that it is front and center. Let us not forget that Christianity began as a apocalyptic movement on the fringe that used aggrieved martyrdom as recruitment tools and evidence of their righteous cause.

Going to the fringe and living in a kind of isolation, a world of alternative facts and predictions and beliefs, is their _normal_ state of affairs. To deny science is to reinforce the claim to their own forms of sacred knowledge that must fight forces of secular evil. To extend the claim of that knowledge from discussions of the afterlife and the end of the world to a politics of nihilism and self-asserted truth is stock in trade, nothing unusual. Ask Constantine. He too understood the power of religion to create empire.

Given how our systems and institutions were created to protect minority rights and prejudice in favor of minority rule, we can expect Republicans will go to _any_ fringe, the new QAnon class in Congress is just the beginning. The crazier it is, the more likely it will be elected in worlds in which there is little to stop the cycles of disinformation and aggrieved claims that the faithful elect must rise up to prevent the work of those representing the devil.

Of course the end of the world is always coming, particularly tomorrow and then tomorrow, but what makes this plausible is that it makes its adherents feel better _today_. There is still hope that we will be marched into the promised land by the one who truly knows the way. Trumpism is not going away anytime soon no matter what Trump does.

And if you think that the end of the world message is a little contrary to the hope it engenders, remember that this hope for savior and salvation comes to the worthy, to the unyielding, to those who know their rightful place in God's kingdom. They also know that they will be berated, insulted by "elites" and voices of secular evil, and that their persecution and pain is tempered by their willingness to "rise up." This was the language of a Trump appointee this morning in response to the evil governor of Michigan addressing the pandemic with new measures based on science. The language was in perfect religious code.

Now reduce any or all of this to a particular issue----coal, guns, abortion, police, immigration---and you can focus in on smaller groups, demographics and locations, individuals in their trucks with the constant barrage and, well, now it's _easy_. The larger end of the world that must be stopped is _your_ issue and it can be the sole reason to vote and certainly enough reason to join the crusade.

How do we avoid this madness from seizing power? The bad news is that it has, in some form or another, always been in power in America. Every effort to progress and compromise is likely to be rebuffed, ignored, or actively obstructed. "Constitutionalism" will mean that anything not explicitly stated or interpreted as they see fit will be delegitimized. Biden will never really be President for some 30% or more?

We are in for a very, very rough ride and democracy itself is on the line. I think Joe is going to need all of the sane people to care, no matter what their politics.