Delusional Patriots Storm Capitol

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

—Voltaire, 1765

Jan 9, 2021 —

Now is the time to drive a wedge between Trump and his followers. They trusted him. One even gave her life for him. And a day later he turned on them viciously. Many Republicans have piled on. To drive this wedge, we should openly sympathize with his base in two ways — agree that they are (misinformed) pro-democracy patriots, and admit that we all know how it feels when we are betrayed by someone we trusted.

Delusions are no small matter. Slavery was based on delusion. Germany killed millions, and hundreds of thousands of Germans gave their lives for Hitler’s delusions. But to fight such delusions, it’s essential to know who is the knowing source and who is the ignorant victim.

“A violent mob declared that it should decide who becomes the next president.” Anne Applebaum (whose latest book I highly recommend} asserted on the day after the MAGA insurrection that this was part of a broader “argument over the validity of democracy itself.” I sympathize with her distress, but she’s got her story backward.

Trump chose his crazily-difficult argument that the Democrats perpetrated a ginormous steal of a MAGA landslide because he had no choice. He knew he could not come close to winning an argument against democracy. No politician dares take such a position. But, as I’ll argue, that does not mean our democracy is safe.

Applebaum simply ignores the signs, “Stop the Steal,” and ignores everything we’ve all been saying concerning the danger of Trump’s lies about voter fraud. But why have we worried? Has it not been because we think he’s been deceiving millions? And haven’t we been right all along?

Yes, there were, perhaps, a hundred neo-Nazis and Proud Boys in the crowd. They deserve our opprobrium, but there are far bigger fish to fry. We can’t waste time on the little-schmucks. Thousands of others simply believed their country had been stolen with hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes. That’s what their president and many of their senators and congressmen were saying.

Ashli Babbitt, the 14-year Air Force veteran who died for Trump, undoubtedly thought she was risking her life for her country. Anyone who is convinced by the phantom guru Q that Hillary Clinton is leading an elite Satan-worshiping cabal and drinking the blood of tortured children should not be doubted when they claim to believe Democrats stole a lot of votes. Believing your president and party when they tell you that Democrats are stealing votes is child’s play compared to the leap of faith required by QAnon.

Yes, they really believed, with all their hearts, that the Democrats stole votes by the hundreds of thousands, and by doing so, will end the America you love. Repeat that until it sinks in. Then you can look at the world through their eyes, and sympathize a least with the non-violent ones. It is a dreadful thing to be brainwashed into believing your country is being stolen from you and even the vice president you voted for is knowingly letting this happen.

The real villains are not the deluded, but rather the leaders who brainwashed their trusting followers.

Ashli was guilty of extreme, yet common, gullibility. Trump and the Republican elite are guilty of abusing the naivete of millions in their base to attempt a coup and subvert our democracy. Letting ourselves be distracted by common gullibility in the face of a coup attempt led by the president and most of his party’s leadership, is a tactical blunder of the first order.

The importance of avoiding this distraction was demonstrated when Trump echoed Applebaum’s position just as the Atlantic was publishing her analysis on January 7.

“... addressing the heinous attack on the United States’ Capitol. I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness, and mayhem. … To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay. … I was fighting to defend American democracy.”

Trump had told his mob two hours after they broke into the Capitol, “We love you. You’re very special. … You see the way others are treated [by those] that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel.” But the man who is loyal to no one threw them all under the bus just 24 hours later. That must cut many to the quick.

Showing his base that Trump is playing them for fools has always been the right strategy. But now, for the first time, we have a fair number of Republicans helping out. And not a few of these have been Trump loyalists. Such a person has more credibility with Trump’s base than all the Democrats speaking in unison. This will finally help drive in the wedge.

Also, consider how persuasion works. Lodging two charges against the demonstrators, one true and one mostly false (a lack of patriotism) is a fundamental mistake in persuasive tactics. Any person so charged immediately focuses entirely on the false charge and uses that to discredit, in their mind, the accuser.

We must not play down the present danger. But instead of unnecessarily amplifying the message that the American experiment is failing, we should call out the strengths our system has just displayed. First, Trump was forced to use his base’s respect for American democracy as the only lever strong enough to give him the tiniest hope of hanging on.

Second, Applebaum points out that dictators like Xi and Putin “use violence to prevent peaceful debate and peaceful transfers of power; now they have observed that the American president does too.” But the unmistakable message lies in the difference in scale. Trump commanded by tweet only a disorganized band of slightly dangerous clowns, a few dozen amateur thugs, and quite a few grandparents. No one, not a single person, could mistake the MAGA/QAnon loonies for the Red Army or Putin’s secret police.

What Trump proved on January 6 was that he could command a minor desecration of the capitol, get a few of his supporters to kill each other (the police are mostly on his side), and drive himself from the White House in disgrace. That does not prove our democracy is weak.

American democracy has weakened dangerously. But January 6th showed its strength. The problem is not that the right-wing of the American public has abandoned democracy. The problem we face is the gullibility of the American public when confronted with a frightening culture war and a revolution in targeted social media. The villains, less numerous than they appear to be, are Trump and his sycophants. Now is the time to sympathize with their victims so they can focus on who betrayed them rather than on us.