The big lie

Not since Joe McCarthy, the demagogue and bully who rose to political prominence in the early 1950s by blatantly distorting the truth, has there been a public figure like Donald Trump, the Republican front runner with a penchant for telling “the big lie” about anything from President Obama’s birthplace to Mexican immigrants’ putative criminality, and from how African Americans are responsible for most white homicides to how “thousands and thousands” of Arabs in New Jersey City cheered as the Twin Towers were attacked on 9/11 — along with a host of other fantastical tales in between.
Consider Joe McCarthy, the Republican senator from Wisconsin, in his heyday in the early years of the second half of the 20th century, when he preyed on the American people’s fear of the “communist menace,” at the height of the Cold War, by resorting to “the big lie” to further his career — the big lie being a term taken from Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, where you tell a lie so colossal, and repeat it so often, that no person would believe that anyone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
For McCarthy no lie was too outrageous so long as it served the purpose of fueling the American people’s fears of widespread communist subversion.
“I have in my hand,” McCarthy hollered during a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, in February 1950, “a list of 205 State Department employees that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy there.”
In the following few weeks, the number kept fluctuating wildly, from 57 to 81 to 10, without the senator taking the trouble to produce evidence that there was even one single communist at the Department of State.
Now here’s the kicker: Despite McCarthy’s inconsistencies and his refusal to produce evidence to support his claims, his charges seemed to hit a chord with a large number of Americans.
And that, dear reader, is what Donald Trump is on a campaign to accomplish, except the communist enemy is now supplanted by the Arab immigrant and the Syrian refugee.
Look at these two most recent, but outrageously improbable, lies of his: Donald Trump claims that he saw, with his own eyes, “thousands and thousands” of Arabs in New Jersey City, during the 9/11 attacks, cheering wildly as the Twin Towers collapsed. And, yes, the US is about to “take in 250,000 Syrian refugees” who clearly will represent a security threat to the country. Of course the man with the blond comb-over has produced no evidence to support either claim. He does not feel that he needs to. For Trump truth is his least concern and his own solipsism need show no self-restraint.
The man is so brazen that in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” last Sunday, he exclaimed: “It did happen. I saw it. It was on television. I saw it with my own eyes.” Police denied that it did. No television archival footage ever surfaced of the alleged event. And New Jersey City’s mayor, Steven Fulop, said simply: “Trump is plain wrong. He’s shamefully politicizing an emotionally charged issue. No one in New Jersey cheered on Sept. 11.”
And, of course, the number of Syrian refugees the Obama administration has promised to take in does not exceed 10,000, each one of whom to be thoroughly vetted before arriving in the country.
It’s easy to just dismiss a malicious liar and a bigot like that as a buffoon and applaud what the Huffington Post has done recently: Relegate news about him to its entertainment section, not in the coverage of politics. But this man is dangerous, not just because he’s heading the pack as a Republican presidential contender, but also because he’s now a public figure whose racist views are being amplified and made to trickle down to the American people — views that may become part of the essential repertoire of their political sensibility.
But how long will Trump keep this up? Don’t demagogues like him often burn out before they wreak true havoc on society? Joe McCarty’s personal power collapsed in 1954 when, during televised hearings, he accused the Army of “coddling communists” — to which he got the now famous retort from a witness, “Have you no sense of decency, Sir? Have you no sense of decency?”
The US Senate censored him, and after he was made to resign, he went on to drink himself to death.
Trump has just begun his political career. Americans, sooner or later, will soon see through his big lie — or simply just tire of his infantile and narcissistic tactics — and he too, in like manner, will burn out.