Yesterday, conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote a piece trying to explain why so many Republicans have bought into Trump’s conspiracy of a stolen election. In particular, Douthat is surprised by people who seem otherwise rational and who he would not have thought would buy into Trump’s rubbish. He describes people who are open to conspiracy theories, people who read too much into normal anomalies in voting data, and people who reacted to the protests spurred by George Floyd’s death. He never mentions a decade of GOP leaders, backed by a conservative media, telling their followers that Democrats are engaged in non-stop voter fraud. And he ignores that Fox News, conservative radio, and online media outlets like Breitbart and the Federalist have been telling people for thirty years not to trust the so-called mainstream media. 

Trump is the culmination of years of conservative propaganda and misinformation that was never debunked by conservative leaders and often embraced by Republican politicians. For four years, otherwise responsible conservatives have either downplayed Trump’s lies and distortions or ignored them altogether. So when Trump started telling people last summer that Democrats had a plan to steal the election through voter fraud, his lies had a ring of truth to people who believe that elections have been corrupt for years. 

Republicans and conservatives have created a world of “alternative facts,” as Kellyanne Conway so adequately described them. Even mainstream Republicans live in a world fraught with danger of a new world order. Liberals are coming for your rights and your guns. Pedophiles lurk in public restrooms disguised as women, or maybe men. Gay marriage is destroying families and undermining the church. Planned Parenthood is urging women to kill their babies and make abortion legal up to the time of birth. Black Lives Matter protesters want to rewrite history to make white people evil and demonize our Founding Fathers. And Democrats will rig elections by voting dead people and illegal aliens to make sure they can push their radical agenda through Congress and legislatures. Republicans are the only defenders of God, the flag, and the Constitution. 

I’m reminded of a time 12 years ago when GOP presidential nominee John McCain stopped a woman at rally who was complaining that his opponent, Barack Obama, was a foreign-born Muslim who wanted to destroy America. He told her that Obama was a good man who loved this country even if he disagreed with Senator McCain on policy. None of today’s top Republicans would take such action. Indeed, none of them are now. 

In North Carolina, Senators Thom Tillis and Richard Burr, as well as House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, know that Trump is lying about voter fraud and yet they stand silent, giving a wink and nod to an outright assault on our democracy because they know it will fail. Think about it. They are watching an attempt to undermine faith in our electoral process and they approve of the effort. They are either cowards, scared of offending their base or their peers, or complicit in an act that is very close to sedition. Either way, they care more about maintaining power than protecting the American experiment.  

Looking back thirty years, the path to today is clear. Rush Limbaugh and right-wing radio hosts began an assault on the media and Democrats, playing to the fears and prejudices of a largely uneducated group of voters. With the entry of Fox News a decade or so later, conservatives created an information bubble that validated all of their beliefs, no matter how misguided. The internet provided an even louder echo chamber and allowed them to tune out any opposing views or contradictory narratives. By the time Trump arrived, even mainstream Republicans were living in a world where all of their views were confirmed and no GOP politician dared contradict him, even when he attacks his fellow Republicans. 

The lack of courage and moral fortitude among the Republican leadership bodes ill for the two-party system and our country. Their alternative facts have created an Orwellian alternative reality inhabited by too many Americans. They believe their biases and have media and politicians willing to perpetually confirm them. In other words, they are living a lie. It can’t end well.