Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 02:54 pm
One does well to watch Morning Joe whether one likes any of the usual panelists and hosts, or not (I happen to like them). It is important because, given the alternatives, it is the show that the insiders in Congress and the White House watch, even Republicans, whether they admit it or not. One can quibble with the definition of “serious” in this context, but it is the most serious political show offered in the all-important time slot.
One of the strongest on the show has always been Mika Brzezinski, and she was particularly on her game this morning in her response to hearing the Republicans’ response to the Kevin McCarthy tapes. Many of them are simply waiving them away as… fake. There is no reality in GOP world, not one beyond the cartoon they create.
Mika listened Rep. Maria Salazar’s explanation of the tapes:
It was edited. You see, I know the art of editing, so I’m not sure in what context. But what I’m saying to you is that is not a matter of trying to find out it happened, what he said is the whole story. Don’t you guys see it, what you guys are doing? You know, it’s like, history will judge the news organizations 100 years from now.
Wrong. History will judge this entire period as the transition from American democracy to an American dictatorship, and Mika knows a thing or two about dictatorships.
“My god. I know her. She knows so much better.”
Joe jumped in, picking up Mika’s emphasis:
“These people know they’re lying and they know that we know that they’re lying. They know that their rank-and-file know they’re lying, yet they just keep lying.”
After noting that Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin also said that one can’t ever trust anything coming out nowadays because they can splice tape however they want, Mika returned to her theme that blatant and casual lies of the type that Trump used during his rise are now the norm in the party.
Former White House Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri said the obvious, a right-wing fascist takeover requires the destruction of “truth:”
“This feels like it is all the same fight. It’s like, it is whataboutism, which is what Russia does. That is their play. The fight in Ukraine, how the Republicans are casually lying and everyone accepts it and expects it to happen, how that’s hurting Democrats when they don’t stand up to fight back, both in terms of pushing back culture war, but also these fights take hold when you’re not making progress. You know, that’s when Democrats — when you’re not making progress on behalf of working people, that is when the culture war stuff takes place.”
Most people don’t understand that propaganda, used most effectively, isn’t meant to make any one person believe any one thing at any given time. It is to convince people to give up on the idea that the truth even exists at all, never mind whether they’re getting it. Everyone has an angle. You can talk to people standing in the room who observed something, you can have video of something taking place, it will be explained away, everyone has an angle, it’s easy to splice, create one’s own video, all of it. One can be in the room, but can you trust what was heard? Everyone has an angle. There’s no such thing as truth. Everyone has their own truth.
We see it every day in the Republican party and it’s the strongest evidence in existence that they intend to take their party to the hard right, the fascist right, a dictatorship. Faced with demographics that clearly demonstrate that their future is one of a minority party (and a minority race, if we confine it to white and especially male), they are not adjusting their beliefs to attract more people to their agenda. No, they are keeping their agenda and grabbing power the only way a minority party can, through fascism. And we’re watching it happen in slow motion.
As I reported yesterday, the Republicans already have a plan to win in 2024 without regard to the popular vote. They will simply rely upon state legislatures and a puppet SCOTUS, 5-4 on a critical 12th Amendment question. Absent criminal arrests, setting out THE TRUTH, it is all preordained.
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