The liars, the deniers, and the aggressively ignorant

Individual responsibility and public accountability are casualties of the modern GOP.

Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales

I was barely aware of the Eric Swalwell scandal before he was gone. That’s how Democrats deal with abusers. It’s not how Republicans deal with them. The parties are not the same.

I never liked Eric Swalwell. He seemed like an internet creation looking for clicks more than a serious political leader. In other words, he looked like a Republican. Now we know he behaved like one, too.

Republicans are trying to claim that Swalwell’s behavior was an open secret in Washington. If that’s true, why didn’t they do something about it? They’ve got a whole army of conspiracy theorists and fake news reporters making unfounded allegations every day. Why didn’t they know about Swalwell? Were they too busy making up stuff to pay attention to the open secret? Or are they just too incompetent to chase real scandals instead of imaginary ones? Or maybe it wasn’t as open as they’re now claiming. I’m going with number three.

But give Swalwell a little credit. He brought down one Republican Congressman that the GOP has been protecting for months. Rep. Tony Gonzales admitted to an affair with an aide who committed suicide. Before her death, he demanded she send him nude photos of herself. Republicans were willing to put their House majority before any sense of morality. Not until Swalwell resigned, when they added to their majority by a seat, did they force Gonzales out. Shameful.

Of course, they’re still protecting Florida Congressman Cory Mills (no relation, but if he were, I wouldn’t coddle him like Republicans are). Mills has been accused of assaulting one girlfriend and threatening to release nude photos of another after she dumped him. I’m not sure what his wife says about all this, but Republicans in Congress seem fine with it. They don’t even mind that Mills seems to have been profiting off of federal contracts.

Really, none of this should be any surprise. The GOP has rallied around a con man and reality TV star who is plundering the government, selling pardons, and who has a long history of dubious sexual relations, including credible accusations of abuse. The party has abandoned any pretense of morality and they’ve largely taken the evangelical community with them.

The Republican Party is now made up of the people who lie to their supporters, the ones who lie to themselves, and the aggressively ignorant. Winning is their only core value and they’ve set up an alternative reality that allows them to live with themselves. Personal responsibility and public accountability have been casualties of their electoral success.

The liars are people like Thom Tillis and most of the Republican establishment. They know what’s right and do what’s wrong. Erick Erickson, for instance, often goes on Twitter or his podcast and speaks the truth, but stops short of any accountability. Tillis and Erickson will put what’s good for the Republican Party ahead of what’s good for the country every single time.

The people who lie to themselves are basically in denial. I saw a Republican Congressman say he didn’t hold Donald Trump responsible for his actions because he believes the accusations against the president are false. Trump has been found liable for sexual assault and spent much of the 1980s and 1990s making outrageous claims that would have prevented most other politicians from getting elected to anything. He bragged about illicit affairs, said that no age was too young for sex, palled around with Jeffrey Epstein, and paid off a porn star to prevent her from talking about their tryst. People who don’t believe the evidence in front of them, much of it in Trump’s own words, are in deep denial. They are both pathetic and dangerous.

Closely related to the people in denial are the aggressively ignorant. They are mostly rank-and-file MAGA. They lack critical thinking skills and are easily manipulated by the right-wing media ecosystem. They seek out confirmation bias and are not open to opinions or facts that contradict their reality. They are willingly manipulated by the liars and the deniers to vote against their self-interest or for things they supposedly oppose.

These people make up about 35%-40% of the population, far too much for a healthy society. They’ve allowed people devoid of morals to proliferate in government because winning is the central unifying principle of the party. My hope for open dialogue and debate is essentially gone because one side so routinely says one thing and does another that the trust necessary for a healthy democracy has been destroyed — and Republicans destroyed it.