When does something count as a “BIG LIE”?

A timely title, no?

The other day I bought a Wall Street Journal for the first time in months, curious to see what it would have to say about President Biden stepping down from the 2024 campaign and endorsing Kamala Harris. In an extraordinary opinion piece, headlined (and I realize that writers do not provide headlines themselves) “Democrats Will Pay for the Biden Big Lie,” Matthew Hennessey wrote that Biden’s announcement 

...brings to an end the big lie Democrats have been telling about the president for at least a year and maybe longer — that he is in full control of his mental faculties…. 

 

What can I say about such a leap of logic? But wait. Let’s go back to Hennessey’s first paragraph: 

 

President Biden told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos earlier this month that only “the Lord Almighty” could get him to abandon his failing bid for re-election. Well, someone call the Vatican: I’d like to report the second coming.

 

My first question: Do Christians say the Lord must appear again on earth for Him to speak to his believers? I never heard that.

 

Leave religion aside, though, and let's address politics: No one is ever in a race for office until that person officially declares. It’s all denial, denial, denial until the announcement. Similarly, no one is ever dropping out until that person announces his or her campaign is over. That’s the way the game is played. Grow up, Matthew. You didn't know that?

 

As for “lying” on the part of Democrats, how does MH conclude, from Biden’s dropping out of the race, either (1) that the president's mental faculties are failing or (2) that other Democrats believed that to be the case and have been lying about it? As I say, quite a leap. Reaching such a conclusion would require at least one additional premise, but, if MH does have another, he has hidden it well.

 

If you want to judge President Biden’s mental strength, you have only to watch and listen to his interview with Lester Holt. In that exchange, it’s obvious that Joe’s mind is still sharp as a tack. His voice is weak, and he is showing the fragility of age, but his thinking is clear — unlike that of the Republican candidate. 

 

As for “big lies,” who is the champion? Who kept claiming that Barack Obama was not born in the United States? Who is still claiming, in the face of a mountain of disconfirming evidence, that the 2020 was “rigged,” “stolen,” etc., etc.? 

 

Has the Republican nominee, I wonder, made any true public statements? Let’s have one quoted, please. Just one substantive true statement. I’m waiting....

 

Did you ever in your life think it would get this bad – in your lifetime?

He whose name I shall not mention, the one who refuses to say he would accept the election results unless they met his fairness standards (translation: unless he were to win), he who is the tool of the Heritage Foundation and the one they depend upon to enact their Project 2025, he who blasphemously advertises himself as the next Jesus Christ (and is somehow accepted as such by people who were once people of true faith), promises to bring about a “Second American Revolution.” Irony hardly seems appropriate in this nightmare scenario, wherein the tool assures his followers that he will be a “dictator for a day” -- was there ever such a thing? -- to help them “take back our country.”  Those he wants to “take it back” from are legion: -- well, there! I saw a video in the morning and thought it would be easy to find again. It was not, and I wasted a lot of time looking through online crap. I do remember mention of "Communists" and "vermin." Naturally, undocumented workers would be rounded up, along with "criminals." (He forgets that he is a member of that category).

 

What the Heritage Foundation and presumably the Republican candidate (oh, how a once respectable party has fallen!) want to establish, however, is nothing like the U.S.A. but a government more repressive than any the United States has ever known. In this “brave new world” they would put in place, the teaching of history would be banished. (Teachers and librarians are already under siege in many places.) Many government agencies would be abolished and the ones allowed to continue purged of "disloyal" experts, to be replaced by loyalists, whether expert or not. Undocumented aliens would be swept up in the largest-ever dragnet for mass deportation. Not only abortion but also contraception would be outlawed. 

The devil in the details goes on and on, but the keystone is that the president, under Samuel Alito’s “unitary executive” theory -- only last week given a massive accelerative boost by the Supreme Court -- would have almost unlimited powers if and only if what the president did were approved by the Republican-stacked Court, so a president elected on the Democratic ticket obviously could not, literally, get away with murder, as could a Republican. 

 

Make no mistake: Call it what you will, this plan is not conservatism, which is why I call the Court “Republican-stacked” rather than “majority-conservative.” Privileging one political party over another is not conservative. Purging government agencies of the those denoted as “disloyal” is not conservative. Turning the president into a king, above the rule of law, is absolutely not conservative. 

 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal….”

 

Confession: I post on Facebook. On July 4, I posted a link to Heather Cox Richardson’s July 2 podcast on three recent Supreme Court decisions, the so-called “debate” between the two presidential candidates, and the obvious truth: No one is coming to save us. As HCR notes, we certainly can’t depend on the so-called “liberal press”!

I was disappointed (though not, I admit, surprised) at how few Fb friends bothered to follow the link to the podcast. It wasn’t, after all, a cute puppy picture or a pretty garden photo they could simply “like”  before moving on, so they simply scrolled by. I tagged a couple of friends and edited my introduction to say that the link might take them to the most important words they would hear that day, but -- deaf ears, for the most part. Not that people don’t care. Some are so firmly convinced that the game is lost, so demoralized, that rousing them from their lethargic stupor seems all but impossible. 

 

This morning I was thinking about personality traits and what I would say if someone asked me to name my worst. Of course, I don’t know what others would say about me (and maybe don’t want to know), but I do know myself to be very stubborn. On the other hand (and this fits right in with my philosophy of life, i.e., that everything is a double-edged sword), if I weren't stubborn, my bookstore would not have survived for 31 years, because I would have quit when the going got tough, rather than taking on one part-time job after another to hang on by my fingernails. And in this case, which involves nothing less than the future of our country, I don’t see giving up as an option.

 

So if you have lost all hope, please ask yourself what you have to gain by infecting others with your defeatist attitude. You need to vent? Vent in the shower! When you speak your presumptive defeat publicly or smear it all over social media, you only give aid and support and endless amusement to the opposition. 

 

Fear is something to overcome. Defeatism is not a game plan. Another name for stubbornness is perseverance or persistence. If you can’t summon up any positivity or determination, then, if you got no sisu at all, put a sock in it. Or – 

When you just can't keep it zipped!