Rev. Robert L. Montgomery
We all know about the “Big Lie” spread by Donald Trump and his followers in which he claims he won the 2020 presidential election. Though proven wrong countless times, the Big Lie has been followed by a continuous stream of lies. One of the most insidious recent lies being spread by Trump and his MAGA followers is that President Joe Biden authorized the FBI to kill Trump when they were searching for top secret documents he had taken. This is an especially dangerous lie that undermines the safety of FBI agents everywhere.
False information can stimulate violent actions and Trump followers have shown their tendency to take violent actions. The United States, like every society, contains unstable people who are want to cause harm based on false information. The internet today carries a great deal of false information. What is particularly discouraging is that many Republicans, even some who are leaders in the party and should know better, have repeated the falsehood about plans to kill Trump. Anyone who makes this claim cannot claim to be considered a “mainstream” or moderate Republican. They are part of an authoritarian movement which is attracting followers from ordinary people. They have shown a desire to threaten violence and, as we saw on Jan. 6, 2021, people are very capable of following threats with carrying out violence.
This is why the lie about violence being authorized against Donald Trump must be taken very seriously for the harm it can do. Honesty requires us to recognize that violence lies beneath the surface in most people, but certainly in American society. It has surfaced throughout our history, most obviously in the Civil War, but also in various violent actions, such as lynchings that were all too common for more than a century after the Civil War.
The language that is currently being used to stir up followers of Trump is “existential,” meaning that the very existence of America is threatened and that it is necessary to act to “save” the nation. However, the existential language of Trump and his followers requires existential language to oppose it. I believe that it is essential for those who do not believe the lies about the “stolen election” and the additional lies up to the present must face the current existential situation: the existence of our democracy is a stake. The evidence is that so many of the tactics used by Trump and the MAGA extremists are parallel to the assault of fascists on European countries in the 1930s.
The best defensive approach is to use truth and honesty to expose falsehoods and demand that officials act with integrity. First, members of the Supreme Court must make sure that the decisions of the justices are not compromised by wealthy friends and partisan influence. This is no trivial matter. It arises from the Supreme Court lacking an enforceable code of ethics and oversight of recusal decisions. The Supreme Court needs to restore the confidence of the American people in it.
America is at a crisis point in which it will move in one of two directions. The direction I hope we take is to continue making progress, marked principally by the increasingly full and equal participation of all ethnic groups and the willing regulation of economic forces so that they will have a positive contribution to all the people in our society and will be used to protect the beautiful natural world in which we live.
The other direction America might take is toward an authoritarian government in which voting rights are reduced, racial jerrymandering goes unchecked, taxes on the rich are reduced leading to ever larger fiscal deficits, the Supreme Court continues to demonstrate partisan bias, reproductive rights of women are blocked nationally and LGBTQA+ rights are not protected. These alternatives to progress could be restated as: whether America will continue to exist as a democratic nation in which freedom and human rights are guarded. America is not a perfect nation, but we have made progress through the struggle and sacrifice of many people. We continue to need the determination of our people to protect our democracy and preserve liberty and justice for all.
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Rev. Robert L. Montgomery, Ph.D., lives in Black Mountain.