Say It Will Be So Joe

In the last week, I made rack of lamb and quoted Shakespeare in an all-associate email.

To make this the most unlikely of trifectas, I will now poke at the third rail and write about politics.

Since the case against Donald Trump is so vast, let’s focus on white nationalism and conspiracy theories.

In 2017, white nationalists held rallies on consecutive days in Charlottesville, Virginia; this led to counter protests and violence. Trump’s initial comment read in part, “we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides—on many sides.” This caused immediate outrage and Republican senator Marco Rubio tweeted, “Very important for the nation to hear @potus describe events in #Charlottesville for what they are, a terror attack by #whitesupremacists.”

Two days later, reading off a teleprompter, and appearing as the late Charles Krauthammer memorably put it as if it was a “hostage tape,” Trump said he condemned in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred. The next day, Trump negated any goodwill from his words of the day before by again seeming to look for ways to find a moral equivalence between the two sides.

As part of his explanation for why he did not say more initially, Trump talked about needing to “know the facts.” This is particularly rich from a man who for his entire life has shown a willingness to be, charitably, loose with the truth, and who led the charge that Barack Obama was not born in this country.

From the birther conspiracy theory, let’s move to QAnon, which has rapidly increased in popularity in recent months. The Wall Street Journal defines it as, “a far right-wing, loosely organized network and community of believers who embrace a range of unsubstantiated beliefs. These views center around the idea that a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles—mainly consisting of what they see as elitist Democrats, politicians, journalists, entertainment moguls and other institutional figures—have long controlled much of the so-called “deep state” government, which they say seeks to undermine President Trump, mostly with aid of media and entertainment outlets.”

This is how Kevin Roose describes it in the New York Times. “QAnon is the umbrella term for a sprawling set of internet conspiracy theories that allege, falsely, that the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who are plotting against Mr. Trump while operating a global child sex-trafficking ring. QAnon followers believe that this clique includes top Democrats including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and George Soros, as well as a number of entertainers and Hollywood celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres and religious figures including Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama. Many of them also believe that, in addition to molesting children, members of this group kill and eat their victims in order to extract a life-extending chemical from their blood. According to QAnon lore, Mr. Trump was recruited by top military generals to run for president in 2016 in order to break up this criminal conspiracy, end its control of politics and the media, and bring its members to justice.”

Asked about the conspiracy, Trump said, “I’ve heard these are people that love our country. So I don’t know, really, anything about it other than they do, supposedly, like me.”

Thomas Friedman started a recent New York Times column by asking what you would do as a parent if your child came home from school and said, “President Obama ordered the killing of the U.S. Special Forces team that supposedly killed Osama bin Laden. My teacher said Bin Laden is actually still alive, that the guy the Navy SEALs killed was a ‘body double.’ He also claimed that Obama’s aides got Iran to send Bin Laden to Pakistan so Obama could have a ‘trophy kill.’ What’s a trophy kill? My teacher said he had heard all of this somewhere on the internet and he just thought he’d pass it along to our class. Mom, Dad, is this true?”

These are all things the President of the United States recently tweeted or retweeted.

Let’s close this out with two quotes. During the midst of a challenging summer for our country marked by racial unrest and COVID-19, former Trump Defense Secretary Jim Mattis wrote, “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

Biden made a particularly strong closing argument at the end of a recent 60 Minutes interview.

“Look, there’s a lot of reasons people are upset, a lot of good reasons. All he wants to do is take that sort of subliminal fear out there and say it’s because of that guy or because of that woman. That’s not who we are as a country. I mean, this is not who we are. It’s not our value system. We hold these truths to be self-evident. We’ve never met it. We’ve never met the standard, but we’ve always gone further and further and further toward inclusion. It’s the first president who’s trying to shut it down. We cannot sustain this democracy that way. We’re so much better than this.”

Say it will be so Joe, say it will be so.