The top 5 underemphasized stories of 2021

If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Abraham Lincoln, 1838

2021 was supposed to be the year things returned to normal. A highly qualified, easy-going, gentleman was entering the White House and, with the help of the new vaccines, the pandemic was going to be defeated. Instead, the country became more divided, with the right-wing becoming even more radicalized and violent. The pandemic reached new highs with two new variants.

We have become so used to a state of constant crisis that we have effectively “normalized” what used to be considered outrageous behavior. In this post I hope to remind the reader of a few events of the past year that we must not forget. If we fail to turn these events around, the consequences will be disastrous and long-lasting.

1. The former President of the United States continues to deny the result of the 2020 presidential election.

The rhetorical tactic called “The Big Lie” is a propaganda technique. It is done by the telling a deliberate falsehood repeatedly and by treating it as if it is self-evidently true. Its purpose is to win an argument by taking the Big Lie for granted and not allowing any critical questioning of the lie.

A truly pernicious Big Lie will be repeated constantly to wear people down and make it impossible to ignore. Big Lies are designed to appeal to people’s prejudices, and are stated in simple, easy to repeat, language.

Donald J. Trump has always been a pathological liar. His malignant narcissism, and general lack of intellectual power, leads him to invent the “reality” around himself from moment to moment. This is not news.

The news is that, for the first time, a sitting President of the United States completely refused to acknowledge the legitimate result of a fair election. In his petulance, he even refused to attend the Inauguration of his successor.

His continued insistence on this Big Lie has damaged American’s trust in our own democratic procedures, has turned the Republican Party into a fascist personality cult, and has set in motion the likely downfall of American democracy.

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

Walter C. Langer, “A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler,” 1943

2. The President of the United States promoted a violent insurrection at the National Capitol in order to deny the Presidency to the legitimate winner.

Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!

Donald J. Trump, Twitter, Dec. 19, 2020

Donald Trump knew the January 6th insurrection was coming. He knew about the various “Stop the Steal” groups that kept popping up on Facebook. He knew when those groups moved to Parler and Gab because Facebook kept shutting them down. He pressured state election officials to “find” more votes for him. He supported the dozens of failed lawsuits to challenge the vote in various states.

His last chance to remain in office was to disrupt the official Congressional count of the electoral votes on January 6th. Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon had lined up Republican House and Senate members to challenge the vote in key states and were working on Republican state legislatures to provide “alternate electors.”

Trump encouraged his supporters to come to Washington, DC on January 6th, the day the electoral vote was to be counted. At the “Save America” rally that day, he specifically instructed the mob to march on the Capitol building.

We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”

Donald J. Trump, January 6, 2021

I shouldn’t have to point this out, but this is treason. He literally promoted a violent overthrow of the election. At the very least, his actions were a violation of his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Why is this man not in prison? And why is the entire Republican Party, federal, state, and local, bowing down before this demagogue?

3. Six Senators and one hundred twenty-one House members challenged the electoral vote. All were Republican.

Heading into the vote count, 14 Republican senators had planned to object to at least one state’s election results, though a few changed their minds about it after Trump’s mob attacked the Capitol.

These “objections” were purely partisan and were based on Trump’s Big Lie. The role of Congress on January 6th was simply to formally count the electoral votes. They were not in session to litigate the election. In fact, any “concerns” about the state elections had already been presented to, and rejected by, multiple courts.

These elected “representatives” were actively trying to overturn the will of the voters. They claimed to have “concerns” about election integrity, but they had absolutely zero evidence to support any of their claims.

By promoting the Big Lie and voting to overturn the election results for no reason other than rank partisanship, these officials violated their oaths of office and betrayed the Constitution. Every one of these Republicans is a threat to the future of our country and should be removed from office.

4. Nineteen Republican-majority state legislatures passed bills to make it harder to vote.

In 2021, 19 states enacted 33 laws that restrict voting. These restrictions were specifically designed to limit voting access for the poor, the home-bound, college students, and people of color. In other words, they were designed to reduce the number of Democratic voters.

Some of these laws made it harder for elections officials to properly do their job. Even worse, some of these laws take power away from non-partisan elections officials and give the power to partisan Republican officials.

These actions are inexcusable. They reveal a corrupt desire among the Republicans to gain and maintain political power by manipulating the vote against the true desires of the citizens.

The right to vote, easily and conveniently, by mail or in person, should not be in the slightest question if we truly claim to be a democratic country.

The Freedom to Vote Act, which is before Congress, could protect the voting rights that have been taken away. Yet, not a single Republican Senator has announced support for the bill. They seem to know that their party, in its current state, cannot win elections if they are fair. Rather than reform their party, they have decided to destroy our electoral system.

5. The world’s climate continues to collapse.

It is madness that, while all this right-wing authoritarian fascist nonsense has been distracting us, we continue to ignore the fact that the world’s climate continues to rapidly deteriorate. While we fiddle, the planet is burning.

The 2021 summer fires turned into the 2021 winter floods and landslides. Tornado season is no longer limited to May and June. Hurricanes continue to grow stronger. On the day after Christmas in 2021, Kodiak, Alaska hit 67 degrees while Los Angeles was at 59.

These are not normal weather events. Again, we have allowed the outrageous to masquerade as “normal.” Unless and until OUR house burns down, or OUR grocery store is empty, or the water stops coming out of OUR tap, or OUR electricity goes out, we seem determined to ignore reality and continue to blunder on without addressing the problem.

Climate change is accelerating and may soon cross the threshold that climate scientists call a “tipping point.” The Mitch McConnell-led Republican Senate blockage of Biden’s Build Back Better bill is disastrously holding up the US government’s ability to work on this crisis.

A New Year

This new year of 2022 may be our last opportunity to rescue American democracy and, finally, take some major steps toward saving the planet. If the mindless Republican cult takes back a majority in either the House or the Senate in the 2022 election, both games are probably over.

Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.–Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws.

Abraham Lincoln, 1838

Sources

— “How Will the History Books Remember 2021?” Politico, December 29, 2021.
Abraham Lincoln, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions,” Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838. (Abraham Lincoln Online).

Deny the Truth
— “Big lie,” Wikipedia.
Zachary B. Wolf, “The 5 key elements of Trump’s Big Lie and how it came to be,” CNN, May 19, 2021.
Eli Stokols, “Republicans’ belief in Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ holds steady as confidence in U.S. elections dips,” Los Angeles Times, December 16, 2021.
Alex Shephard, “If you want to get ahead in the GOP, you’d better support Trump’s Big Lie,” The New Republic, July 7, 2021.
Jessica Schrader, “Malignant Narcissism: Does the President Have It? An Update,” Psychology Today, May 22, 2020.
Henry Alford, “Is Donald Trump actually a narcissist? Therapists weigh in!,” Vanity Fair, November 11, 201 5.
Walter C. Langer, “A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler,” Office of Strategic Services (OSS), 1943.

Stir up Violence
Jose Pagliery, “Trump Advisor Peter Navarro Lays Out How He and Bannon Planned to Overturn Biden’s Electoral Win,” Daily Beast, December 28, 2021.
David R. Lurie, “Jan. 6 Was Just the Start of Radicalizing Trump’s Republican Party,” Daily Beast, December 31, 2021.
Jaffe, DePillis, Arnsdorf, and McSwane, “Where the Wild Things Are,” Orlando Weekly, January 13, 2021.
Dan Barry and Sheera Frenkel, “‘Be There. Will Be Wild!’: Trump All but Circled the Date,” The New York Times, July 27, 2021.
Amy Sherman, “A Timeline of what Donald Trump said before the Capitol riot,” Poynter, February 11, 2021.

Corrupt the Process
Barbara Sprunt, “Here are the Republicans who objected to the Electoral College count,” NPR, January 7, 2021.
Miles Parks, “Some Republican Senators walk back objections to election results,” NPR, January 6, 2021.

Manipulate the Rules
— “Voting Laws Roundup: October 2021,” Brennan Center, October 4, 2021.
— “The Freedom to Vote Act,” Brennan Center, November 3, 2021.

Destroy the Environment
Jennifer Gray, “67-degree day in Kodiak, Alaska, sets new statewide temperature record,” CNN, December 30, 2021.
— “Tipping points in the climate system,” Wikipedia.
Jeff Tollefson, “What Biden’s $2-trillion spending bill could mean for climate change, Nature, December 17, 2021.