Thread by @jeffblack945

#RevThread #05-09-21
The Big Lie

1/ It’s true that Donald Trump is a liar. He lies about himself, about his wealth, about other people, about non-existent threats to the country, about his family, about what he’s done. He lies a whole lot.

2/ Donald Trump's admiration of Mussolini, Hitler, Putin, Duterte and of other “strong men”, leads him to imitate those liars. He has learned from them that if you lie consistently and repetitively and if your lies flatter the prejudices of your audience,...

3/.. pretty soon lots of people will believe your lies. And as more people believe your lies, those committed to telling the truth may weary of being dismissed and fall silent.

4/ Autocratic lying does have some subtleties, subtleties that eluded me until today. Turns out that there’s a hierarchy to the lies.

5/ There’s a front lie that distracts from the more toxic and more profitable background lie. So, for instance, what the media calls “The Big Lie” is this: “There was widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.” It’s a complete lie, a sensational lie, a seductive lie.

6/ “Voter Fraud” is an effective lie as well -- it insults those the liars dislike, it entrenches those the liars depend on. People who repeat the lie become liars, liars passionately convinced they are right when in fact they are utterly, empirically wrong.

7/ What we call “The Big Lie” is what our ancestors called Propaganda -- deliberate mistruths designed to enlist the public in an agenda of amassing more power and more wealth for the liars.

8/ But “Voter Fraud” is not the big lie. “Voter Fraud” is a rhetorical device designed to enhance, to further, the real Big Lie.

9/ In the 2020 election, voter turnout was the highest in at least a century. The greatest number of people ever voted in the Presidential election. What was especially high in that election was voting by African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans. Americans all.

10/These Americans, common sense will tell you, are the authorities on racial antagonism directed against them.

11/ Meanwhile, Trump’s GOP contains many White People who apparently feel displaced in an increasingly diverse America.

12/ And so, voter suppression, and - as we see in Arizona, attempted voter nullification - became the logical defense of the real Big Lie. Suddenly, all across the nation, the voting system must change! No more “Souls to the Polls”!

13/ African American people often love to go to church and then, in the afternoon, they go together to do a second sacred thing after worshipping together -- they go to the polls.

14/ You know what’s wrong with that? Not one single solitary thing. But White politicians in state houses voted to outlaw “Souls to the Polls”. No more Sunday voting.

15/ The real Big Lie, the perduring, toxic, crippling lie, the lie that is so sacred we cannot utter it aloud, is this: “Whites, especially wealthy male Whites, should run things.”

16/ What do you think the Donald Trump presidency was about? The real Big Lie. Make American Great Again was the slogan barely disguising the real intent --”Make America White Again.”

17/ God, who creates us all, is not mocked.