December 12, 2020
(Prior to Russian Invasion of Ukraine & January 6 attack on the Capitol)
As President-elect Biden calls for unity, 74 million voters still believe Trump is at the mercy of a liberal “deep state”. Disputing Russian election interference, they laud imprisoned Trump allies as “heroes” and believe a failed impeachment effort resulted in “liberal” collusion with China to launch the “plandemic”, all to garnish a Biden win.
It’s not political inclination or differing needs that currently divide us; Trump and Biden voters hold oppositional belief paradigms. Trump pleads mail-in ballot fraud and election machine tampering, while loyalists heed his call to arms.
It’s us versus them, and democracy is at stake.
In a 1998 CNN interview, Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB foreign counterintelligence director, described Soviet intelligence goals as “subversion... to drive wedges between alliances.. to weaken the military, economic, and psychological climate in the West.”
A populace divided by idealogy, geography, education, race and religion, and, most especially, income disparity, the US has been rife for exploitation. A 2007 New York Police Department report outlines a four-stage process by which the vulnerable become terrorists: pre-radicalization, self-identification, indoctrination and jihadization.
Have we become radicalized by our own free speech?
In 1987, no longer bound by the Fairness Doctrine, cable and radio news began to deliver opinion-as-fact, skewing the national conversation with deliberately biased rhetoric. Our increasingly media-obsessed culture tuned in, eagerly self-identifying as “liberal” or “conservative”. When the 2010 Citizens United decision reversed previously regulated campaign donation limits, super PAC’s funded the deliberate obfuscation of motive and fact, increasing confusion, widening the divide.
The effect has been paralyzing.
As changes to news media and campaigning open the arena to foreign actors, political disillusionment and distrust discourages 40-50% of eligible voters from turning out to the polls.
Russian intelligence exploited an internet and social media environment rich in click-bait, sound-byte, meme-based divisiveness that preys on instinct and emotion, rather than critical thought. Indoctrination was well underway when candidate Trump took to Twitter. Displaced followers, voracious for a leader to coalesce relevance in a sea of hatred and divisiveness, jumped onboard.
Trump’s demonizing rhetoric fuels fear, skepticism and doubt, triggering anger and resentment, intensifying “otherness”. During his presidency, Trump’s claims became increasingly ludicrous. In a February 2017 tweet, Trump called journalists “the enemy of the American People”. Subsequent allegations of “fake news” were used to substantiate his false narrative.
Post-election, the chasm between Trumpism and fact-based reality continues to widen, which leads us to that jihad thing. . . How close to mayhem are we?
When a counter protester was killed during a 2017 Proud Boys-organized white supremist rally in Charlottesville VA, Trump referred to “very fine people on both sides.” In June 2020, after threatening to use the military to quell national protests of the George Floyd killing, Trump authorized the use of tear gas and rubber bullets to dispense a crowd of peaceful protestors outside the White House for a photo-op. During the first debate in September, pending election results, Trump called for the Proud Boys to simply "stand back and stand by”.
Trump’s calls to violence have not gone unheeded.
U.S gun sales hit new records in 2020, with over 5 million Americans purchasing guns for the first time. The NRA, identified by a 2019 Senate Finance Committee report as a Russian asset in the 2016 election, must be pleased.
Armed counter-protesters turned out in US cities for the George Floyd protests, which became fatal. Murders in US cities are up 15%, according to preliminary FBI reports.The death toll of innocent blacks by US police climbs.
Partisan rivalry, long bitter, is suddenly dangerous. Biden’s win in Michigan was decisive, but that didn’t stop dozens of armed protesters from gathering outside Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s home last week, shouting threats through bullhorns as she prepared for Christmas with her four year old son.
Chris Krebs, the Homeland Security cybersecurity specialist fired by the White House after he declared the 2020 election the “most secure in American history”, called the Guliani press conference contesting Biden’s win the “most dangerous hour and forty-five minutes of television in American history”. In a subsequent right-wing Newsmax interview, Trump’s campaign lawyer Joseph diGenova called for Krebs to be “taken out at dawn and shot.”
Biden calls for a return to civil discourse, but it’s only taken four years for Putin to deftly manipulate Trump’s Republican cadre of grifters, opportunists and social climbers, capturing 74 million spellbound new loyalists. Biden’s ability to restore calm may well depend on the results of Georgia’s runoff elections.
Indeed, democracy is at stake. At least that, we can agree on.
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