If you say something often enough, loud enough, long enough and to enough people ready to believe whatever you say without question, eventually you will build a political power base that will be difficult for truth tellers to topple.
That's what has happened in America over the past few years, as Donald Trump began his campaign to take over the government. There is no question that he succeeded, briefly at least, winning one term as president by manipulating the Electoral College vote despite losing the popular vote in 2012.
Four years later, he lost on both counts but refused to accept the results, and continues to spout the Big Lie that the election was stolen through massive and widespread fraud.
His complaints were rejected by some 60 county, state and federal court rulings, including two unanimous decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, with three members appointed by Trump himself.
Now we are engaged in a great civil discourse, testing whether this nation can survive under its 230-year-old Constitutional set of rules for government behavior.
This writer raised the question in December, just a few weeks after Election Day, that Trump would not accept the results of the election and the court decisions, and might encourage his followers to take some form of action to prevent the inauguration of his duly elected successor.
I was right.
On January 6, he encouraged his followers to march on the Capitol to stop the formal acceptance of the vote count by Congress, which would then certify Joe Biden as the new president.
He failed.
But failure was not an acceptable outcome, so he maintained his denial and did not attend the inauguration of his successor. Instead, he attended a rally of his supporters and continues to encourage his supporters to expand their belief that the election was stolen from him.
In many states, popular support remains so strong that other elected officials don't oppose him in fear they will lose their positions.
This is a prime symptom of demagoguery.
The danger of a demagogue taking power is clear. America has escaped that danger several times in the past, and now the symptoms have returned with a greater likelihood that the disease will sicken the nation's political health to a critical level.
This writer once posed the comment that if we survived Richard Nixon, we can survive anything. Now I'm not so sure.
That's what has happened in America over the past few years, as Donald Trump began his campaign to take over the government. There is no question that he succeeded, briefly at least, winning one term as president by manipulating the Electoral College vote despite losing the popular vote in 2012.
Four years later, he lost on both counts but refused to accept the results, and continues to spout the Big Lie that the election was stolen through massive and widespread fraud.
His complaints were rejected by some 60 county, state and federal court rulings, including two unanimous decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, with three members appointed by Trump himself.
Now we are engaged in a great civil discourse, testing whether this nation can survive under its 230-year-old Constitutional set of rules for government behavior.
This writer raised the question in December, just a few weeks after Election Day, that Trump would not accept the results of the election and the court decisions, and might encourage his followers to take some form of action to prevent the inauguration of his duly elected successor.
I was right.
On January 6, he encouraged his followers to march on the Capitol to stop the formal acceptance of the vote count by Congress, which would then certify Joe Biden as the new president.
He failed.
But failure was not an acceptable outcome, so he maintained his denial and did not attend the inauguration of his successor. Instead, he attended a rally of his supporters and continues to encourage his supporters to expand their belief that the election was stolen from him.
In many states, popular support remains so strong that other elected officials don't oppose him in fear they will lose their positions.
This is a prime symptom of demagoguery.
The danger of a demagogue taking power is clear. America has escaped that danger several times in the past, and now the symptoms have returned with a greater likelihood that the disease will sicken the nation's political health to a critical level.
This writer once posed the comment that if we survived Richard Nixon, we can survive anything. Now I'm not so sure.
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