‘The big lie’ a falsified revision of history

I read David Brooks in the New York Times Tuesday, as I do regularly, and though I don’t generally agree with his politics, I always find comfort in his goals. In this column, he talked about putting the needs of others ahead of the narcissistic focus upon the self.

Mr. Brooks’ quiet, contemplative style has reassured readers for years, that a thoughtful cadre of compassionate humans from many perspectives can put their collective minds to finding common ground. As a moderate conservative, Brooks often focuses upon issues of family, community and education, culminating his writing with some reminder that it is always in consensus, that we find solutions to both simple challenges and indeed, the most difficult ones. That he has spent some time of late criticizing this president, speaks volumes to this conservative writer’s enduring sense of decency.

Brooks bears no resemblance to either the personality or the wicked tactics of “the big lie,” as implicated, without trace of irony, by Bruce Lorich in his editorial defense of Donald J. Trump in this newspaper on Friday. In a comedic response to this same accusation against former President Bush, comedian Jon Stewart once commented, “Yes, and just like Adolph Hitler, he puts his pants on one leg at a time.” Lorich’s commentary was equally ludicrous, though more ominous in the twisted “logic” that informs the worldview of so many Trump supporters.

On his recent trip to Europe, Trump delivered a speech on his first stop in Poland to an “enthusiastic” audience, hand-selected by Poland’s new right-wing autocratic president. The speech, likely written by the deeply troubled Steven Miller, and the selective crowd, were reminiscent of another time, closely echoing Leni Riefenstahl’s 1939 propagandist film for the Nazi regime, titled “Triumph of the Will,” a chilling defense of white nationalism, including the scapegoating of millions, attacks upon the free press and rampant paranoia regarding the decline of white civilization.

Speaking through cowardly tweets and the dog whistlers of Fox and Breitbart, and winding through the twisted articulation of Trump’s birtherism, to his invective hurled at Mexican immigrants as “criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.” and federal judges as “so-called judges,” Trump repeatedly equates white supremacists sporting multiple weapons (Vice News, on video) and torches, to generally peaceful protestors in Charlottesville, Va. The serious consequences of policy generated from these perspectives include a growing isolation from the rest of the world, constant attacks on the free press, and the mental torture of millions on a daily basis by tweet and surely, by budget plans that hurt women, children, our sick, our elderly, our poor and yes, our immigrants, all of them. All generated by the fake populist in the people’s house.

It is the falsified revision of history that is indeed “the big lie,” Mr. Lorich, and you align yourself willingly with the perpetrators. That you have “never heard President Trump say one, single racist word” is perhaps a result of your own failure to listen closely, both to the man now installed in the most important job in the world, and to the history of that world, which suffered under such regimes, and indeed will likely suffer under this one.

This story was originally published September 20, 2017 at 7:35 PM with the headline "‘The big lie’ a falsified revision of history."