Tag: cognitive dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance (GOP Encore Edition)

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) has announced that come Wednesday (6 January 2021) he will object to the certification of the Electoral College result. Purportedly 140 Republican members of the House will do the same. This is not simply madness, it is shamelessly attempting a coup d’etat. Here. In the United States of America, where we fancy ourselves a beacon of liberty to the world, champions of democracy and justice. Does it get any worse than this? One wants to believe, desperately, that it does not. One is certain, after the egregious anti-democratic behavior and unabashed self-dealing of the last four years, that it does, it can, and it probably will. With just over a fortnight left in this worst of all possible administrations, the damage gets worse every day.

The immediate damage is deliberate, and seeks to hamper and hinder the incoming Biden administration even before it gets started (as described here by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post). But the more lasting damage will be to our body politic generally, and — ironically, fittingly, and most deservedly — to the Republican Party specifically. The intellectual rot appears irreversible: when elected officials question not simply the legitimacy of an election, but the legitimacy of their own election, something is very wrong indeed. Apparently “democracy” and “free and fair election” are malleable terms. Fair elections are those in which “our guy wins” whereas any other result is ipso facto the result of unimaginable corruption and conspiracy.

But now come Hawley and with him Ted Cruz and ten more fully Trumpified senators who say they will not accept the outcome, as will 140 Republican members of the House. These people were elected on the very same ballots as Biden, and the inconsistency of their own twisted logic seems to bother them not one whit. We are forced to contemplate two, and only two, alternatives: that these elected officers are too stupid to realize the full implications of their false claims; or too craven to care. And which is worse in a public servant? Do we prefer them feeble-minded, or unscrupulous? Each of these dozen senators was invited to explain on television why they will not accept Biden’s clear victory; each and every one refused the invitation or declined to answer it. To dimwitted and unprincipled we evidently must now add rude. (That a sitting senator would refuse an invitation to appear on television is in itself another oddity.)

Forty years ago the GOP threw its principles overboard in order to win elections: in the place of conservative policy ideas that could be discussed, tested, and adopted (or discarded) as appropriate, the party adopted slogans and demonstrably false claims — the language of ad agencies and mountebanks. Tax cuts will increase revenue! Competition is a magical cure-all for all things political, economical, and educational! New immigrants — to this literal nation of immigrants — are coming to take your jobs! Politics became, in other words, a game. It was no longer about compromising to improve the lives of citizens and constituents; it was about winning elections and achieving, holding, and keeping power.

Decades of empirical evidence haven’t been enough to wipe away these failed ideas, emotional triggers masquerading as  public policy. Our society, our country, our world have all suffered needlessly as a result. We should all hope that the GOP’s most recent self-inflicted wounds prove at long last to be fatal.

Enough, Already

Seriously, enough. Enough of the frivolous lawsuits, the fraudulent claims of fraud, the fact-free fits of faux outrage. In the five weeks since Election Day, we have seen the same play fifty times: the Trump campaign screams about nonexistent fraud and sues to have election results reversed; absent any actual facts and any plausible legal theory which would allow the disenfranchisement of millions — for no reason other than the litigant doesn’t like the election result — the court summarily dismisses the case. Trial courts will have none of it; appellate courts won’t allow it; and the United States Supreme Court refuses to hear the case.

In the latest episode of this outlandish opera buffa is brought to us by the state of Texas, which wants to sue the states of Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan in the US Supreme Court. What possible cause of action might Texas have? Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has concocted the notion that these four states somehow damaged the Lone Star state when they changed their election rules to allow universal mail-in ballots — something which Texas surely could have done, as well, but chose not to.

Per The New York Times:

The lawsuit, filed by the Republican attorney general of Texas and backed by his G.O.P. colleagues in 17 other states and 106 Republican members of Congress, represents the most coordinated, politicized attempt to overturn the will of the voters in recent American history. President Trump has asked to intervene in the lawsuit as well in hopes that the Supreme Court will hand him a second term he decisively lost.

The suit is the latest in a spectacularly unsuccessful legal effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn the results, with cases so lacking in evidence that judges at all levels have mocked or condemned them as without merit. Legal experts have derided this latest suit as well, which makes the audacious claim, at odds with ordinary principles of federalism, that the Supreme Court should investigate and override the election systems of four states at the behest of a fifth.

Of course, there will be no end to this farce: it has proved far too profitable for Trump, for whom a debt load of about $420 million comes due in the next year. Since Trump almost certainly hasn’t the cash, isn’t capable of writing a book worth a nine-figure advance, and has spent his 74 years avoiding spending his own money when grift and suckers are available, he has turned his electoral loss into a fundraising opportunity: donations to his “stop the steal!” fund are directed, in essence, into his own pocket. His credulous supporters don’t read the fine print and won’t believe anyone who has.

That the demands to invalidate the electoral results require a feat of dizzying mental gymnastics, cognitive dissonance on a scale rarely if ever seen, doesn’t seem to bother these self-styled defenders of democracy one whit. Consider: the election was rife with fraud on a massive scale, but only on the top line of the ballot. All the down-ballot races — races which the 126 members of Congress now clamoring for SCOTUS intervention won — were magically legitimate. It defies law, it defies logic, and it defies any real sense of patriotism, which would put country over party and long-term civic goals above short-term self-interest.

That this suit is without merit (and beyond redemption) hasn’t stopped Republican attorneys general of seventeen other states from seeking to join the fun — despite the irrevocable certification of election results in all fifty states. This is an unabashed attack on the core and fabric of democracy; it is, in a word, seditious: We don’t like the result so we must find a way, any way, to undo and overturn it. And if we can’t do that, can we at least undermine public confidence in all electoral outcomes? (We don’t care if it undermines our own victories as long as we can seize power and maintain control of the levers of government.)

This is not representative self-government. It is reprehensible self-serving. Enough, already. Republicans, you lost. Sit down, shut up, and muzzle your Dear Leader. He is doing the Republic great harm — and you, too, if you gave a care to history.