America isn’t goose-stepping toward fascism. That’s not our style. We prefer sleepwalking.
Consider this past weekend’s double dose of demagoguery. Just routine business while we inhaled the baseball playoffs and the usual pigskin pugilism:
For instance, you might be interested to know that Kari Lake, an ex-Fox News local “personality” who’s now running for governor of Arizona, delivered a master class of MAGA demagoguery yesterday on CNN. Let’s hit the highlights.
CNN host Dana Bash sought to question Lake about the latter’s serial lies about the 2020 election: “You called the 2020 election corrupt, stolen, rotten, and rigged. And there was no evidence of any of that presented in a court of law, or anywhere else, that any of those things are true. So, why do you keep saying that?”
Lake’s reply: “Well, there’s plenty of evidence. We had 740,000 (Arizona) ballots with no chain of custody.”
Bash: “Where is the evidence of that?”
Lake: “There’s plenty of evidence. You can find it. Well, I can – I can – I’m happy to send it to your team. The problem is, the media won’t cover it.”
Bash: “We covered this extensively, and what you just said has been debunked.”
Lake: “Only one side of it, Dana. The real issue, Dana, is that the people don’t trust our elections.”
Somewhere in a distant celestial realm, George Orwell just puked. But here on earth, Dana Bash gave it another try: “The question is, are you undermining faith in elections by saying that the 2020 election was stolen, when there’s absolutely no evidence to support that?”
Lake: “We have the right, and it’s protected with our First Amendment, to question our government and to question elections. And when you start seeing the media cancel people for questioning their government, then there – that’s when we have a problem.”
Bash: “So, if leaders like you and President Trump are saying that the election was stolen, aren’t you participating, contributing, even causing the idea of people thinking that the election is not safe and secure?”
Lake: “No.”
After much sparring, Bash got to the bottom line: “Let’s look forward, then. Will you accept the results of the election in your (gubernatorial race)? Will you accept the results?”
Lake: “Can we talk about issues?”
Bash: “Let’s talk about the 2022 election. Will you accept the results of your election, Ms. Lake?”
Lake: “…I’m not going to lose this election, because the people of Arizona…”
Bash: “My question is, will you accept the results of your election in November?”
Lake: “I’m going to win the election, and I will accept that result.”
Bash: “If you lose, will you accept that?”
Lake: “I’m going to win the election, and I will accept that result.”
There you have it. Lake and hundreds of other MAGAts are comfortable trumpeting their lies and fascist intentions in plain sight, because why not. There’s ample evidence that we Americans on the cusp of the midterms care far more about our lack of material wealth than we do about the health of the institutions that have sustained us for 233 years – so why make a fuss about demagoguery?
Which, predictably, brings us back to Trump. This past weekend, on his corrupt social media site, Kari Lake’s hero complained that Jews in America don’t appreciate him enough. Then he flashed a bat signal to the nation’s anti-Semites: “U.S. Jews have to get their act together…Before it is too late!”
Gee. Where have we heard something like that before?
Hitler, January 30, 1939: “The Jewish race will have to adapt itself…or, sooner or later, it will succumb to a crisis of an inconceivable magnitude.”
Naturally, not a single prominent Republican has condemned Trump’s missive. It was just another sleepwalking weekend in America as we drift ever closer to getting the country we deserve.