NO MORE TRUTH
I think it might be time for us to let go of the idea that truth matters. It’s not that there’s no such thing as the truth. Climate change is real. Covid is real. Racism is real. Biden won the 2020 election. These things are true. But there is an enormous population of people for whom these truths represent an existential challenge to their world view. Deep down they may know these things are true, but acceptance of these truths would force them to walk away from another truth that, for them, is far more important.
That truth, embodied in “white replacement theory,” centers on the idea that, “somehow, nonwhite people or outsiders or strangers or foreigners will overtake the United States via immigration, reproduction and seizure of political power.”* You can add to that list of people who will “overtake” the U.S. queer people, “socialists,” and even women, that is, women who are not prepared to accept male domination. Beyond the U.S. you can include all first world countries. This is an international phenomenon.
Donald Trump succeeded because he established himself as the supreme avatar of those who believe they are being replaced and want nothing more than to stop that from happening. To be clear, it IS happening and thank god. That’s enough of white people running the world, thank you very much. When we say that climate change is real, covid is real, racism is real and that Biden won the 2020 election, we identify ourselves as the enemy of those who embrace that theory. More truth will not persuade them otherwise, in fact it just confirms it.
Recently, when Trump and Sean Hannity announced at a rally that they had both taken the Covid booster, they were booed, not because the audience does not believe Covid is real (they know it’s real) but because Trump and Hannity were allowing for a crack in the armor of the world view. Unacceptable. The base (or as I call it, the BEAST) will cut bait on Trump or Pence or anyone who walks away from, or diminishes in any way, the world view.
Republican politicians already understand that it is not they who somehow control the beast or that they have any power at all to tell truth to the beast. “If only there were more Adam Kinzingers and Liz Cheney’s” we lament. They know it is the beast that has been unleashed and that now controls them. When Trump came down the escalator and started talking about Mexicans as rapists, the beast tuned in. They were already there, waiting to be unleashed. They’ve been there forever, waiting, ready, or if you prefer, standing by. They were there during and after slavery, during Jim Crow and after, and they’re here now, the beast that cannot abide the other: the black, the brown, the queer, the Jew, the liberal, the intellectual, the educated, the democrat, the socialist. The beast has been roused and it will not be persuaded by truth.
I have grown increasingly irritated and impatient with well-meaning pundits and politicians who seem to believe that the antidote to our “current situation” is more truth. I fear that enormous quantities of time and energy are being misdirected in the search for ever more facts that will prove these truths: If only we could better communicate the dangers of Covid, or climate change, or the pervasiveness of systemic racism, or the number of courts that have rejected claims of fraud in the election, then, somehow, minds could be changed. It’s not going to happen. Each time I see that quizzical expression, that furrowed brow, that scratching of the head, followed by the beseeching question, I want to scream: THEY DON’T CARE! The truth is irrelevant. I believe they (the beast) actually already do know, somewhere down deep, that these things are true. But the other thing is just too important.
Remember the first impeachment? Remember how loudly we screamed when the Republican controlled Senate refused to allow witnesses to be heard and testimony to be submitted that would PROVE all of Trump’s blatant crimes? Remember when he withheld essential military aid from Ukraine in an attempt to extort Zelensky into opening an investigation into the Bidens? Oh, if only we could have had that testimony! Surely enough Senators would then have been persuaded to vote in favor of impeachment. No, it wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference. (Rinse and repeat for the 2nd impeachment.) And now, if only we can compel the testimony of Trump’s inner circle to tell us EXACTLY what was going on behind the scenes on January 6, surely then the blinders will come off and…
We are confronting people who have bought-in to a kind of murder/suicide pact. If they accept that Covid is real and that it can be prevented by wearing masks and getting vaccines, or that climate change is real and we must take action to reverse it, then they will be forced to accept that the liberals and democrats who are advancing such views are right and they are wrong and then where will it end? “We won’t have a country anymore!” they shout.
It seems they are willing to die themselves and to kill others — even, apparently, their own children — in their adherence to that world view. They will not let go of the world view even if it means that, by refusing to be vaccinated, by refusing to wear masks, they bring down the whole economy. They are willing to let go of the idea of democracy and cede power to an autocrat if that autocrat will promise them a return to the world (call it Mayberry) that once was and that they see slipping away from them. They will accept a dictator if that dictator will deliver them to Mayberry.
I believe we’re wasting valuable time and energy in search of ever more facts and truth. Please, just stop. They don’t care. Ernest Becker explored all this in “The Denial of Death.” Experimental social scientists have expanded his ideas in Terror Management Theory (TMT) with studies that show how cultural world views buffer us from death awareness. Collapse of the world view brings us face to face with our own mortality and triggers symbolic death. Humans have always been willing to risk actual death in defense of culturally constructed world views (see Hutus v Tootsis, Crips v Bloods, Catholic v Protestant, Christian v. Muslim, and on and on.) It’s the most powerful force on the planet. I wrote a book about harnessing these primal forces in the service of investing our on-stage characters with life and death motivations. But this is the real deal.
So, what can be done? We need to employ, as ruthlessly as we are able, whatever political power we still have under our control. We need to remind ourselves that WE are the 60%. The beast is cornered and snarling and fighting back with every ounce of its existentially challenged strength. We’ve got to stop talking to it like it’s a naughty puppy that needs more love and tender care. I’m not saying we should stop speaking and teaching the truth — especially to the young — or to stop investigating January 6, but we need to expend at least as much energy on preventing the looming political catastrophe.
LOOK UP! We are literally on the edge of ceding power to autocrats. Once that happens forget about meaningful responses to climate change or homelessness or poverty or systemic racism or gender inequity. Time’s up. Abolish the filibuster. Pack the court. Just do it.
Oh, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!
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Thanks to Amanda Nash for the “Ted Koppel Trip to Mayberry” clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZme-GsKv_g
*Kathleen Belew, co-editor of “A Field Guide to White Supremacy”