Post-Truth Politics
Self-contradictions, blatant lies and the need for second sentences
Consider two common insults popular among hate-filled extremists.
• Jews are weak — but they are secretly own and control everything.
• Immigrants are lazy and getting undeserved welfare — but they are also stealing our jobs.
How can people think that way? How can they can hold completely opposite, laughably opposite, positions?
Start with this: They don't think such things are true. They believe those things are true.
It's an important distinction.
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American politics is a perpetual campaign. The actual work of government — policies and plans and projects — is buried under a constant exchange of soundbites, slogans and labels.
Imagine being a working lawmaker. You're sitting across a negotiating table and facing this:
— Gun bans won't work, but abortion bans will.
— The government can't make you wear a mask, but it can force you to give birth.
— Free speech is vital, but we'll ban books and censor teachers.
— We'll insist on free market reforms for health care, but block government negotiation over drug prices for decades.
— Complain about labor shortages, but block immigrants looking for jobs.
— Assail activist judges, then pack hundreds of them into federal courts.
— Proclaim you're pro-life, but support the death penalty.
Where would you even start?
Let's pose this as a policy question. Let's say it's time to establish a nationwide network of charging stations for electric cars, Republicans will say it's wasteful, deficit spending — that what's needed is a free-market, private enterprise solution.
This sounds all properly conservative and sensible until you take it one step further. It's a proper function of government to build the highways, but when it comes to the cars, you're on your own?
Make that make sense.
* * *
Back in my political reporter days, you could count on consistency from small-government, social-conservative, fiscal-hawk Republicans. You could disagree with them, but they believed what they were saying.
Post-truth politics is an entirely different matter. Newt Gingrich may have popularized bomb-throwing, attack politics in the '90s, but the fight over Obamacare moved it to an entirely new level. The GOP battled a government takeover of health care, when, of course, there was no government takeover of anything.
As a technique, the lies gained traction because of endless repetition in an echo-chamber media ecosystem. Trump turned them up to 11, and the disease spread. Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia governorship running on something that wasn't happening. Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance claimed that not only were illegal immigrants coming, his Democratic opponent wanted to use taxpayer money to give them gender reassignment surgery.
Once you're in the business of just making things up, there's no need to back any of it up. This leads to the second terrible development in modern Republican politics — the lack of a second sentence.
"Secure the border" is bumper sticker, not a policy. What about deserving refugees seeking asylum, or what about children of illegals? What about all the German rocket scientists we imported after World War II? They were the founding fathers of NASA. Was that a bad thing?
Policies need details, second and third sentences. You may not need them while campaigning, but they come in handy when you actually have to govern.
When the only answers are tax cuts, deregulation and freedom, the questions better not be too hard.
The only policy I see is taking the fun out of dysfunction.
* * *
Look around your office and find the grumpiest person. Now put them in charge of customer service. Are you not doing the same thing when you vote into government people who think government is the problem?
Here's another example of a dangerously contradictory belief that's become an ingrained mindset. To motivate rich people, they have to have the opportunity to make more money. To motivate a poor person, you have to take away their money and benefits to incentivize them to work.
Make that make sense.
Maybe the most dangerous idea of all is that Democrats want to redistribute wealth, to take from the makers and give to the undeserving. What makes this so insidious is that since Reagan, this country has seen a massive redistribution of wealth. But through lobbyist-induced tax policy, it's gone the other way — from the bottom to the top.
And the people being hurt by it have in large part voted for it.
* * *
It's easy to be discouraged, no doubt, but here's what I find to be the most encouraging thing.
Late-night comics have become the greatest source of news to an entire generation. Things are so wack in our country, the easiest way of processing it is to laugh at it.
It may take time, but at some point the people we're laughing at will finally get it. They'll finally understand.
The joke's on them.
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Mr. Marshall, who uses italics when speaking in his third-person footers, has one day a year when he really misses being a reporter. It's election night.