Reality can’t keep up
Molly Jong-Fast details some of the grotesque commentary from the right after the Pelosi assault. Then writes:
Perhaps it was NBC’s Ben Collins who said it best earlier this week: “Reality can’t even exist anymore because it cannot catch up to lies on the internet.”
Many Republican candidates running for the office this midterm cycle have embraced this post-truth ethos, with the majority of those on the ballot this Tuesday having denied or questioned Joe Biden’s victory two years ago. For Republican candidates, it seems, there’s increasingly no incentive to tell the truth.
Take a recent Senate debate in Ohio, where this post-truthfulness was on full display. “We are running for the United States Senate,” Representative Tim Ryan, the Democratic candidate, said onstage. “This is the highest office you could get in this country except for president. And he’s running around backing these extremists. The most extreme people in the country. A guy who denied Sandy Hook. He’s like, ‘No, he’s credible.’”
J.D. Vance, Ryan’s Trump-backed Republican opponent, shot back: “This is a complete fabrication. I never said that.” To which Ryan responded, “You’re on tape, man. It’ll be like 30 minutes, and we’re all going to know you’re lying.”
Not only is there video of Vance defending Alex Jones, but there’s also a tweet: “Alex Jones is a far more reputable source of information than Rachel Maddow. One of them is censored by the regime. The other promoted by it.” But it doesn’t matter in a post-truth party because Vance’s supporters will believe what he tells them and not what is actually true. Trump may have primed the pump for all this with his relentless attacks on the mainstream media, giving Republicans a better chance at skirting accountability this cycle.
Perhaps the most absurd case of Republicans operating in a post-truth environment is the lie about kitty litter being provided to children who identify as cats. The kitty litter story seems to have gained traction at a Michigan Midland Public Schools board of education meeting when an attendee suggested there were kids identifying as cats (furries) and that these furries were given litter boxes to use in the bathrooms. The story was quickly debunked by Michael E. Sharrow, the superintendent of Midland Public Schools. But in the post-truth ecosystem, what’s true doesn’t necessarily matter if you get enough people to believe the lie.
The kitty litter story has been popular on the stump this year, with NBC News finding at least 20 conservative candidates and elected officials having pushed it. At a campaign event on October 27, Republican Don Bolduc, who’s running for the U.S. Senate from New Hampshire, shared the bogus story, saying, “And get this, get this, they’re putting litter boxes, right? Litter boxes for that…. These are the same people that are concerned about spreading germs. Yet they let children lick themselves and then touch everything. And they’re starting to lick each other.”
None of this is true, all of it has been debunked, but does it matter if a critical mass of voters believes it? New Hampshire could provide a test case, as Bolduc, who has also pushed 2020 election lies, is now running neck and neck with incumbent Senator Maggie Hassan.
This shift into unreality will ripple out in unpredictable and potentially dangerous ways. DePape hoped that the House speaker being “wheeled into Congress” would serve as a warning. This is the kind of unreality that cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard wrote about in his 1981 treatise, Simulacra and Simulation: “We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.” We are swimming in a sea of content, but it’s being rejected by a segment of the population because it just doesn’t fit into their reality. In a post-truth world, everything, including fact, becomes subject to opinion. Kids aren’t identifying as cats and Paul Pelosi wasn’t having some kind of love affair with David DePape. Sometimes, actually, most of the time, the most obvious answer is correct.
Republican politicians are either believers themselves or are liars because their voters will only accept being told what they want to hear. It’s a toxic feedback loop. I do not know how this changes unless those who are benefiting from this dangerous post-truth dynamic stop benefiting. It happened in 2020 but it wasn’t enough. If they had put Trump away after the insurrection it might have had a chance. But they got yelled at in airports and they lost their nerve.
At this point I don’t know what could happen to change their minds. Honestly, no level of right wing violence is likely to do it. A Reichstag fire is a possibility.
But maybe they’ll sober up. It’s always possible.