"Real Fake News" and the Banterings of Real Fake Politicians
Last week, I was covering a debate between Republican Claudia Tenney and Democrat Anthony Brindisi, who are vying for the NY-22 House of Representatives seat. A couple of minutes into her delivery, Tenney gestured to us huddled mass of journalists banished to a far corner of the banquet room and blithely referred to us as, "the Real Fake News." I practically choked on my coffee. What the hell?! Nobody ever called me "fake" before. Why, she doesn't even know me. Likely never read my stuff either, I'll bet. Regaining my composure, I refocused on my note-taking (read my story in Washington Monthly).
Later, I shot her a couple of questions, one-on-one. "Don't you fear going all-in Trump will harm your chances in this election?" I asked. "That's not true," she said. "We happen to agree on most policy issues, but when we disagree, I let him know. He listens–though not for long."
I'm sorry, but this sounds to me - and I'd bet most folks - like Real Fake Political Talk. The evidence:
Ms. Tenney has voted for Trump’s positions 96.7 percent of the time.
She frequently echoes Trump's conspiracy-inspired claims of a "Deep State."
She routinely demonizes Democrats as "un-American," even making the baseless claim that "so many of these people that commit the mass murders end up being Democrats."
Whatever one may think of Claudia, she is a Trump clone in a skirt. Her verbal bomb-throwing has not played well in NY-22, a largely rural district that sprawls from the Pennsylvania line to the Canadian border. Its constituents are flinty Yankees, not Alabama Evangelicals. Gratuitous insults are not in their DNA. They still get all giddy over "Dutch" and Ike. Tenney's approval rating is only 42 percent (compared with Trump's 55 percent). Even a Trump visit this summer to stump for her did not improve her numbers. It must be tough to be disliked by so many people, particularly those whose votes you want.
But I don't mean to dwell on Ms. Tenney. She's merely representative of many copycat Trumpkins this election season. She and fellow travelers pay no heed to what my mother told me, "Treat people as you would like to be treated." Or, as the Lord Buddha said karmacly, "Do good. Receive good. Do bad. Receive bad." Or, as a slew of Republicans face next week, "Be a meanspirited, loudmouthed badass - and lose the election, or retire." Darrell Issa anyone? Watch out Kris Kobach! Or even face eviction - yes, that's you Crazy Steve King.
And "Fake News" is to those who live in a fantasy world built on lies what to the rest of us is known as the truth.
In a previous post, Proud to be an Enemy of the State (and Purveyor of "Fake News"), I said, "Should the Trump Revolution advance to the level of a unitarian regime, I fully expect to be among the first to take a bullet in the back of the head over a freshly dug trench. Why? Because I have the distinction of occupying the top two categories of Trump's Enemies of the State: 1) a Deep State operative; and 2) a member of the Fake News media."
I've spent a career studying authoritarian regimes and radical movements as a diplomat and a journalist. I've lived in some countries with authoritarian regimes. In Cambodia, I saw the devastation wrought by genocide perpetrated by a radical totalitarian regime. In Cuba, I saw a talented, educated people sapped of incentive. From these years of analyzing and experiencing authoritarian governments, I, frankly, fear for my own country. I fear that "low information" voters, the proverbial "fat, dumb and happy," a people who haven't experienced an invasion by a foreign army since 1812, who've never suffered under dictatorship, will easily give up their freedoms to opportunists and maniacs.
Milton Mayer, a German-American journalist who traveled throughout Germany in 1935 to try to understand Hitler's appeal, wrote that under Hitler's thrall, "something had happened that had not (or at least not yet) happened to me and my fellow-countrymen." He found that Nazism took over Germany not "by subversion from within, but with a whoop and a holler." Germans "wanted it; they got it; and they liked it."
In his seminal novel, It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis wrote, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and [be] carrying a cross." Chicago School of Law professor David A. Strauss, cautions: "If it happens here, it won’t happen all at once. A large, diverse society with democratic traditions and a strong civil society is unlikely to become an autocracy overnight. The more plausible scenario is a gradual erosion of liberal democratic norms. . . . The institutions will have been hollowed out; much of what we value in a liberal democracy will be lost."
So, when you hear "Fake News!" and "Deep State," grab your history books. Read about what happened to other countries, not tropical satrapies, but advanced, industrialized societies. Those who bellow these mendacities are "Real Fake Politicians." They'll steal your freedom with a mere whoop and a holler - if you let them.