It was a weekend of the Big Gay Out, the Americas Cup … We spent time with friends, out and about, scanning and masking as required. We were living, if not the dream, then at least our slightly nervous nearly normal. Then the country was back into degrees of lockdown.
Diana Wichtel on the new normal and how it is quickly undone by presidential falsehoods and mutating viruses
By Diana Wichtel
Canvas·
4 mins to read
Political theatre or reality? Photo / Getty Images
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.
That's how incitement works. Trump said, "When you catch someone in a fraud, you're allowed to go by very different rules." The new footage showed the rioters understood whose rules they were playing by. One explained to a police officer, "There's a f***ing million of us out there and we are listening to Trump — your boss." Just following orders.
Senior Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, voted to acquit on a matter of constitutional interpretation. But he understood exactly what happened. "There's no question – none – that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day," he said. "They did this because they'd been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth because he was angry he lost an election."
Trump knows, too. In his statement after the acquittal, he merrily projected a forensic description of his own modus operandi - "... denigrate the rule of law, defame law enforcement, cheer mobs, excuse rioters …" - on to those trying to hold him to account.
There was a shred of comfort to be had from the vote. It didn't hit the required two-thirds majority but it was a historic bipartisan condemnation of the rolling caravan of menacing absurdity that was Trump's presidency.
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.
The spectacle offered insight into how ordinary people become disposable foot soldiers for the worst leaders. The New Yorker's Masha Gessen quotes philosopher Hannah Arendt who, in 1961, reported for the magazine on Adolf Eichmann's trial. "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," Arendt wrote. "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." Trump's most devoted supporters still believe that this little setback is all part of his grand plan.
The scary thing is not what he might get up to in the future but the damage he has already done. His presidency dragged fake news, conspiracy theories and just plain dangerous nonsense from the margins into the mainstream.
It's going to be as difficult as battling a mutating virus to undo that.
