Rick Wilson, a Never-Trump Republican and a founder of The Lincoln Project, warns about the danger of normalizing Trump:
I’m seeing a lot of traditional, DC “bothsides” reporting lately, arguing that this is at some level a “normal” election between a center-left Democratic party and a center-right Republican party.
This morning, Axios published a piece by Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei titled “Behind the Curtain: America’s reality distortion machine,” which caused a stir in political media circles.
It leads out with a question: “Here’s a wild thought experiment: What if we’ve been deceived into thinking we’re more divided, more dysfunctional, and more defeated than we actually are?” and proceeds to make some pretty good arguments about why we’re not a dystopian hellscape. I think they missed the big point, and this piece will stand out as a Washington Normalcy Bias exemplar for a long time.
My friend Molly Jong-Fast lit them up on Morning Joe,
She had precisely the right response: “But you understand that the conventional framing elevates the autocrat.”
No, not every American — in fact, not even a majority — is locked in the day to day of political struggle. Yes, there are silos. Yes, the algorithmic hypnosis of social media is real.
I cede all those points. America is a nation filled with hundreds of millions of people who aren’t partisan jihadis, left or right. There really is a desire for basic decency, decoupled from political rage, induced or not.
They’re not wrong to make these points, and the America they describe is one we should crave—not being involved in politics every moment of the day is a luxury only present in stable democracies.
But they ignore the existential issue underpinning this all.
We aren’t in a nation where the sensible center will survive if Donald Trump wins.
Only one side of the political argument wants their president to govern like a dictator. Only one side believes that the President is above the law — if his name is Donald Trump. Only one side of the political equation mounted an armed attack on the United States Capitol.
Only one side has welcomed the “no enemies to our right” philosophy, which means their party winks and nods at the alt-reich, the white nationalists, and the rest of the Daily Stormer crowd. Only one side is banning books, diving deeply into the seas of culture war cruelty and persecution.
Only one side backs America’s enemies abroad and promises to hand Europe over to Vladimir Putin on a plate. I could recite the Bill of Condemnation all day, but you understand the point.
The political movement that embraces the aforementioned horrors is MAGA, and its sole leader is Donald Trump.
Once again, the world is playing chess, and Donald Trump is eating the pieces and crapping on the board, and instead of horror, the reaction is a shrug.
This isn’t a regular election with typical outcomes.
Ordinary people living ordinary lives who think politics doesn’t matter and that the world will go on as it has can’t grapple with what happens in a post-American Presidency. It seems a lot of Washington reporters can’t either.
Normalcy bias is the best friend of authoritarians. If you think the algo-driven bubble on social media is robust, nothing tops normalcy bias. This cognitive bias can play into the hands of authoritarian regimes or leaders in a few ways:
It plays to the natural tendency for people to underestimate the possibility of a disaster, dictator, or disruptive event coming to the fore. It lets people assume that things will continue as normal because they’ve always been that way. (Berlin, 1936, anyone?)
It lulls people into complacency: they assume things will continue as they always have, and like frogs boiling in a slow pot, they may fail to recognize creeping authoritarianism and the erosion of democratic norms and civil liberties until it’s too late.
It makes people—even people reporting on it professionally—miss clear signals that a movement or regime is becoming more authoritarian, even when its leaders lay out their plans in broad daylight.
Once you say, “It can’t happen here,” there’s a high likelihood it’s already happening.
The normalcy bias makes people slow to react and resist authoritarian encroachments because they don’t perceive the seriousness of the threat until it’s too late.
Normalcy bias also rears its ugly head after the damage is done. Authoritarian actions are emergencies, you see. “The Caravan! Antifa! Transing the kids!” demand temporary measures lulling citizens into acceptance of the worst…and the temporary measures seem to last forever.
People convinced that the current system is immutable are less likely to make contingency plans or organize resistance against potential authoritarianism taking root. Trust me, the Never Trump folks screaming into the void for the last decade can tell you all about this one.
It’s tempting to hope that societal inertia in the center will overcome the energy and danger on the MAGA flank.
It hasn’t, and it won’t.
The right wing media have convinced the country that the “liberal media” have a bias. Sensitive to this, we get the firing of Dan Rather for doing what is commonly a practice of the right wing. asymmetry favors the extreme.
Both Sides. . . hmmm. . . same initials as BullShit.
Ha!
Does any of this sound familiar about what gets “normalized?” (circa 1939)
A self-indulged “leader” disconnected from and disdain for anyone “different” and wannabe card-carrying member of world dictators.
A mesmerizing, get-addicted-to media outlet where alternatives to truth and propaganda are spewed hourly.
Outspoken naming scapegoats, dog-whistles, blurted hate buried somewhere on p. 9’s “In this week’s news.”
Raging rallies. Chants of hate. One-word triggers. Rally goers and “base” waiting to be tweeted into action.
By invitation only – attack the capitol (one notch away from burning it down) followed by textbook gaslighting.
Political justices, fearful legislators, blinded donors.
To Add to the story above, I have just been reading about the hearings about the Idaho abortion case on CNN:
“Prelogar’s argument was met with deep skepticism from several of the court’s conservative justices, but others – including Roberts and Barrett – asked probing questions of both sides. The court’s liberal wing, meanwhile, all signaled they would coalesce around the Biden administration.”
Phrases like “the court’s liberal wing” suggest some sort of parity between the radical agenda of Thomas, Alito, and the Trump three–and the three justices appointed by Democrats. This is an absurdity. Characterization of Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson as liberal, opposite the others is precisely the same idea this author is trying to suggest. CNN, the supposed bastion of left wingism, is actually falling prey to the right-wing plot to seize the democracy and throttle it for good.
Here’s the lead paragraph on Wikipedia about the Never Trump Movement.
“The Never Trump movement, also called the #nevertrump, Stop Trump, anti-Trump, or Dump Trump movement,[1] is an ongoing moderate conservative movement that opposes Trumpism and 45th U.S. president Donald Trump. It began as an effort on the part of a group of Republicans (known as Never Trump Republicans) and other prominent conservatives to prevent Republican front-runner Donald Trump from obtaining the 2016 Republican Party presidential nomination. …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Trump_movement
What you suspected about most Republicans for most of your life is absolutely true. Their devotion to Donald Trump is the reveal that demonstrates, unequivocally, that they are ugly, evil pieces of shit.
What’s even worse is that Trump isn’t driving the train. The press reports on Trump as if he is some kind of Marvel supervillain while more serious organizations such as Hillside and the Heritage Foundation prepare the blueprint for those who will actually be calling the shots. Yes, were he to be elected again, Trump would pretend to be the dictator, but the more nefarious elements of his minions who now run the Republican Party will take democracy out. The Democratic Party doesn’t seem to understand that they have to win across the board and that this will be more difficult than focusing on the Bloviator.
where is the “only one side feels that the separation of church and state goes against (their) Gods will? “ To not mention the powerful evangelical Christian forces (white male predominately) behind Donald Trump misses the entire GOP agenda. They’re Godly, democrats aren’t. If the Dems don’t start spelling this agenda out they’re screwed. Or more specifically, women are screwed. Male dominance over women comes from the Bible – I’m not going back without a fight.
Agreed! Democrats need to advocate democracy openly and loudly while demonstrating the true dangers presented by Christian Nationalism.
Re: ”the normalcy bias”: Once again I highly recommend Lion Feuchtwanger’s novel “The Oppermanns.” It was published in October 1933 [outside of the Reich, obviously], It focuses primarily on the lightning-fast developments of January – May 1933, then follows up on denouement for each character through August of that year. The protagonists are members of a successful Jewish furniture mfg family, with long roots in the Berlin area. But the author casts a wide net of pts of view: the family itself, as well as friends and neighbors include gentiles, laborers, aristocracy, the schools, medicine, publishing. The reader gets a real understanding of difficullt it is for one’s mind to catch up to events and understand their portent.