"Americans should be free to believe anything they want as long as it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." Thomas Jefferson
This founding-father statement has long been regarded as a North Star sentiment for American conservatives and, well, anyone who regards the First Amendment as the key characteristic of our democracy. But like so many other norms and institutional beliefs, this maxim is taking a beating in 2020. Believing anything, as we've discovered, gave rise to Trumpism. And now we're all in danger of losing our dang democracy.
In the meantime, we can still mock President Porridgebrain and his followers. Consider his comments made regarding soup. First uttered in late July during the Portland, Oregon anti-racism demonstrations, they came back up for air a week or so ago. This is good, because they were buried beneath the usual Trumpian daily garbage heap of High Ridiculousness, and are now available again for our regard.
Yep, he really said that anarchists were placing bags of soup on the streets and sidewalks, so that other anarchists could come along, pick them up, and heave them at heavily-armored cops. It's beyond belief, if belief were still a thing that exists:
President Split Pea got a lot of flack for this whopper, so of course he doubled down and has made it a staple in his campaign rallies. In the meantime, much fun has been created:
Our favorite satirist of the age, Alexandra Petri, was not amused by any of it:
"This is not just soup. Soup is a very dangerous substance. For instance, some soup is very hot. Alphabet soup can spell ANTIFA." She is so good, you gotta read it all:
The Terrible Dangers Of Weaponized Soup
"Think of Cream of Mushroom. Cream of Mushroom held America in terror for the entire decade of the 1950s, forcing people to transform it into casseroles. Such was the whim of soup. Such was its awesome power. Chicken soup - it will heal you, but at what cost?"
It's hard to imagine how Trumpenstein could top all that, but he did! Following the Republican National Convention, he declared that a terrorist threat had been thwarted! In an interview with White Power Hour Fox Host Laura Ingraham, he insisted that there had been a plane full of "black-clad thugs" coming "from a certain city" to cause trouble and damage in DC during the convention. (His timeline of this fairy tale would have this plane arriving after the convention, but who cares about things like details and facts?)
When pressed, he doubled down, of course. He claimed that Joe Biden was behind it, but Biden was also being controlled by people in "dark shadows" who ruled "the streets".
"This was a first-hand account of a plane going from Washington to wherever," Trump said. He had suggested earlier that Washington was the destination, not the origin point. "The entire plane filled up with the looters, the anarchists, the rioters."
In fact, he was re-imagining a White Supremacist Facebook post from June that claimed Antifa protestors were flying from Seattle to destroy downtown Boise. Sadly, they never arrived. And yes, you must read the whole article, it is hilarious and it defies belief, if belief were such a thing anymore:
https://globalnews.ca/news/7309385/donald-trump-dark-shadows-planes-conspiracy-theory/
It could be he was thinking of this particular plane:
Moving along in our moments of Defied Belief, there is the phenomenon of the Trump Boat Parades. As the coronavirus prevented the usual Trump Rallies from happening, MAGA-friendly boaters took it upon themselves to festoon their tubs with Trump flags and set sail, flotilla-style. It worked in Florida (of course) and other states, but then last week in Lake Travis, Texas, disaster struck.
In what has since become known as "Dumbkirk", Trump Boaters sped out into the lake, but some of the larger craft kicked up some major wake waves, swamping and sinking five other boats and creating a real 911 marine emergency with scores of distress calls! What a metaphor...
For more, check out this report from the BBC:
DUMBKIRK
Daniel Dale is a Canadian. He used to work for a Toronto newspaper as a fact-checker. He works at CNN now, fact-checking Donald Trump. It very much is a full-time job, and he cannot be paid enough. Here is his recent moment of glory, sticking pins into The Orange One's statements at the RNC convention. I don't even think he stops for a breath here:
Three amazing minutes of non-stop fact-checking Trump's lies at RNC
As he said, "It's almost too stupid to fact-check..." It's almost beyond belief.
Speaking of stupid, there's the annual Sturgis, South Dakota motorcycle rally. This year, over 400,000 attended. You'll note from this picture that there aren't any stores selling masks around there. In fact, this picture is a perfect image of Stupid White People:
"Epidemiologists had been worried about the Sturgis rally, given the huge numbers of people involved and opposition to mask-wearing and social distancing among many attendees. At a concert in Sturgis widely criticized by public health experts, Smash Mouth singer Steve Harwell told the crowd: “Now we’re all here together tonight. And we’re being human once again. Fuck that COVID shit.”
Since the event, COVID cases in South Dakota and around the nation are on the rise (those 400,000 weren't locals). And as a followup, Trump supporter Governor Noem is using $5,000,000 that South Dakota received from the federal government for COVID-related relief funds... on producing tourism ads for the state. Can you believe that?!
The following weird moment happened during a recent Trump press appearance. No surprise there, but it was notable for Trump accusing Biden of using "Mafia Talking Points." Watch it. It's evident that he's reading these remarks for the very first time, written by someone else, and hasn't a clue what it means. He tries to wing it, but it still doesn't work:
Mafia Talking Points
He gamely goes on about how the Mafia works, but any planned connection to Biden is long gone. So dumb... who could possibly believe it?
Later, when asked by the New York Times about his plans for a second term agenda, he replied:
"But so I think, I think it would be, I think it would be very, very, I think we'd have a very, very solid, we would continue what we're doing, we'd solidify what we've done, and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done."
He did not clarify or expand... Considering everything that has been exposed over the last few days, it's understandable why he didn't elaborate. But it's clear that this lucid and powerful statement outlining his vision for America simply underscores his core beliefs.
We could go on and on about any number of recent stupid and numbing revelations, like Bill Barr enjoining the Department of Justice to defend Trump in a sexual assault case, or the Whistleblower at DHS indicating political resistance to exposing Russian election interference and the dangers of White Supremacists, or the Post Office outrage, or the sidelining of funds for Social Security and Medicare, or the politicization of Voice of America, or the continued distinct lack of information and transcripts on calls and conferences with Vladimir Putin and others, or illegally using the White House and Washington Monument as props during a political convention, or...
Oh yeah. The beat goes on. It's the same plan as before: "flood the zone with shit." It's the same playbook used by the Nazis and the Soviets and every Fascist and Autocrat who ever lived. Overwhelm people with a giant firehose of falsehoods, blasting out at all times. The result will be a population that is apathetic and cynical, not caring what is true or false. Existing belief systems break down. Instead, people will look to Dear Leader/The Party for constant direction.
Finally, check out the quote below by the great Hannah Arendt. She literally wrote the book on how Authoritarianism works. It's pertinent because after everything that has happened since 2016 - hell, since January, since YESTERDAY - 40% of Americans are still supporting Trump and will do so, no matter what:
“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
