A couple of tweets Friday from David Frum inspired an insightful thread on Saturday from Paul Krugman that’s worth noting here.
People claim DeSantis is not dumb, however insane and deadly his Covid policies. But Donald Trump knew the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impact would harm his reelection chances, so he denied it was a problem and tried to Jedi-mind-trick it away with happy talk. Bodies overflowing morgues forced him into his flailing response that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. He and Republicans aboard the Trump train amped up their base’s distrust of and hostility towards any gummint action on Covid in the name of free-dom until they, like DeSantis, had painted themselves into a corner. Delta be damned. Their base now demands they (and DeSantis) ride this runaway train to the bottom of “Eastwood Ravine.”
Republicans have habit of breeding such tigers to ride. They and their supporters are trapped in a feedback loop of their own creation, Krugman tweets:
Philip Bump observes that Mike Lindell, by his own admission, has invested so much money and personal reputation in the stolen-election fantasy that he cannot escape. It’s the sunk-cost fallacy. Bump references an observation by Dartmouth University sociology professor Brooke Harrington. She cites a 1952 study by Erving Goffman on how these cons inevitably collapse:
“When the blowoff comes, the mark finds that he has no defense for not being a shrewd man,” Goffman wrote. “He has defined himself as a shrewd man and must face the fact that he is only another easy mark. He has defined himself as possessing a certain set of qualities and then proven to himself that he is miserably lacking in them. This is a process of self‑destruction of the self.”
As someone (perhaps his niece, Mary) said about Trump, his world view does not extend beyond his mirror. He needs to feed his self-image by plastering his name on things in gold, by inflating his ratings, by holding rallies in which he bathes in praise, by insisting cabinet members fawn over him, and by obsessing over displays of strength and fears of showing weakness. Self is all he is. He cannot admit he lost reelection. Take that away and he’s a black hole. Lindell, having made himself a celebrity in Trumpworld, cannot walk away either, or else lose face. It would be sad if not for how many other lives they’ll destroy, and perhaps the country, too.
Thus, it took 20 years for the U.S. to exit Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires. As John Kerry famously said in 1971, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
By never admitting the mistake, of course. That’s a sign of weakness, right?