SYCOPHANTS AND DOUBLETHINK -- HOW TRUMP SURVIVES

SYCOPHANTS AND DOUBLETHINK -- HOW TRUMP SURVIVES

All authoritarians have their yes-men, their sycophants, their specialists in the arts of disinformation.  

Some of them bathe their mendacity in the warmth of a reasonable demeanor, killing as it were with a form of kindness. In this version, disinformation is disguised on the grounds that  no one so nice could be so wrong. Others, however,  cast their mendacity as an impaling sword, slaying their opponents with fevered lies launched within insults. In this version, disinformation is disguised on the grounds that no one so ugly (or weak or little or . . . choose your ad hominem)  deserves any less.

In the first case, what is false prevails because it is made to appear true.  In the second, it prevails because the critic himself is made to appear false.

Authoritarians are not required to choose their poison.  There is no handbook on this. Sometimes, they embrace the first tactic, other times the second.

And then there are times when the sycophancy is double-barreled.  

Both tactics are practiced.

A la foi, as the French would say.

We are in one of those times now. 

As the Trump Administration enters its second year this week, the big stories are the Mueller investigation and the porn star.  The first is a continuing saga.  The independent counsel has now questioned Trump's attorney general, the FBI's former director, and assorted members of the Trump campaign. It has obtained a couple of guilty pleas, and it appears to be focusing on whether the President obstructed justice -- principally in firing James Comey but also in the now infamous Air Force One edit of Don Jr.'s account of his meeting with the Russian lawyer who was billed as having promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. 

In the meantime, the Steele Dossier has been given new life via the release of Glenn Simpson's testimoney to the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Simpson is the Fusion GPS head who hired Christopher Steele, a respected MI6 operative in Great Britain, to do the dossier, and his testimony revealed extensive Trump ties to Russian money, ties Mueller is no doubt looking into as well.  The "collusion" in this case may turn out not to be a quid pro quo  where the Russians got a policy promise in exchange for their Internet campaign against Clinton (though this cannot be eliminated yet as a possibility).  Instead, it may turn out to just be a case of old-fashioned extortion, with Trump forever going light on the Russians and Putin -- and he clearly has done that -- because he knows  he is in hock to them on the financial side in ways never disclosed during his you'll-never-see-my-tax-returns Presidential campaign.

This is all serious stuff.

And then there is the porn star.

Which would be serious in any other Administration.

But is a back pager in this one.

The porn star is Stephanie Clifford, whose nom de guerre or stage name is Stormy Daniels. In 2006, she reportedly had an affair with Trump just after his wife gave birth to their son, and in 2016 the Trump campaign arranged through one or more shell entities to pay her $130,000 to stay silent.  This, moreover, she has done.  Her account became public only because a pre-pay off 2011 interview with In Touch magazine was unearthed. In any case, in addition to the pay-off and the affair, the soup was made more salacious when one of Stormy's fellow travelers said that she too was invited to "party" with the Donald and Stormy.

When the words "porn star,"  "menage a trois," "tidy whities," and "Donald Trump" appear in the same sentence, the picture is . . .

Not something anyone wants to see.

So, can't we just end the show, change the channel?

Last night, evangelist Tony Perkins was on the tube defending Trump on the porn star front.  Perkins is head of the Family Research Council, a prominent evangelical activist group.  In the interview, he said that evangelicals are giving Trump a "mulligan" on his past sins.  The lewdness, cursing, p**y grabbing, misogyny and porn stars of the past are being forgiven.

As long as Trump doesn't relapse.

Perkins was insistent about this last point.  Evangelicals have been labelled hypocrites for their embrace of Trump.

Michael Steele, the former head of the Republican National Committee, went so far as to say that evangelicals should "shut the hell up." As he put it, "After telling me how to live my life, who to love, what to believe, what not to believe, what to do and what not to do and now you sit back and the prostitutes don’t matter? The grabbing the you-know-what doesn’t matter? The outright behavior and lies don’t matter? Just shut up.” 

But Perkins is having none of that.

“We see right and wrong. We see good and evil, but also among evangelicals, there’s an understanding that we are all fallen, and the idea of forgiveness is very prominent,” Perkins says. “And so, we understand that, yes, there is justice, but there is mercy.”

Perkins was nothing if not sincere.

And well-mannered.

And he smiled.

Really hard to dislike.

So isn't Trump entitled to a second chance?

Or even a two-hundredth?

This is the show that has playing for the past two and a half years.  

Nothing ever matters.  Trump embraces white supremacists in Charlottesville, insults hurricane victims in Puerto Rico, labels Mueller's investigation a hoax,  belittles every opponent, calls the press the "enemy of the people," and insults female critics with age old retreats to menstrual cramps, all without ultimate consequence.  He is truly gross, and he lies with impunity, so much so that no one believes his denials (or even his promises, vide Sen. Schumer on last week's putative DACA deal) anymore. 

Except Tony Perkins. 

In 1984, Orwell defined doublethink as "To know and to not know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, . . . to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself." 

Today, that passage defines many a Trump speech . . .

Or Huckabee Sanders press conference . . . 

Or Fox broadcast.

Masha Gessen has just published The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia.  In it, she explains how "[w]hat Soviet people were required to believe and proclaim was counterfactual, and the requirement itself was . . .  a mechanism of control."  Trumpism is engaged in the same type of project in this country.  His crowds are bigger despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary; the economy is better despite growing inequality; the country is respected despite his Administration being held in disrepute throughout most of the world; and the Russian investigation is a "hoax" despite the fact that four intelligence agencies have concluded otherwise.  "Repudiating morality while laying claim to it," he asserts that nineteen women he allegedly sexually harassed are all lying, as is the one porn star who was reportedly paid to stay quiet, and that his "locker room talk" admitting harassment was just that and no more.

Trump has an approval rating that averages about 38%.  No one has ever gone this low this soon.  And he has been there for the better part of his first year.  Between the serious stuff in the Mueller investigation,  the seedy stuff with Stormy, and the sheer breadth of his lies,  he by rights should not be surviving.

But he is.

Why?

It's the sycophants, stupid.

And the doublethink they all preach.