Word: mumpsimus.
Definition: an error or prejudice obstinately clung to
Application: The Republican Party

President Lincoln, Republican par excellence, after the disastrous Battle of Chickamauga in 1863, said of Union General Rosecrans: “He is confused and stunned, like a duck hit on the head.” Lincoln could have been speaking of the contemporary Republican Party, the pathology of which is more severe than that of the aforementioned bludgeoned duck.

Ironically, this GOP reminds me of the former Soviet Union. Its members have little positive policy to propose. They will, however, like our Cold War adversary upon observing the policies and actions of the United States, rail against them in reactionary umbrage.

Recall the Hunter Biden Laptop Syndrome prompting Kevin McCarthy’s minions to boldly declaim a two-tiered justice system in the United States. Three hundred years late with a plethora of missing history. Their epiphany would be laughable were it not so pathetic. Ask a black man incarcerated unjustly for decades; ask a native American violently kicked off his land; ask a Japanese American victimized by internment or the American women barred from ever voting. No, it was Hunter Biden’s laptop that opened their eyes.

The Jan. 6 insurrection was a fool’s mission. Sadly, the participants were dupes. Timothy Snyder’s book “On Tyranny” quotes the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski in its epigraph: “In politics, being deceived is no excuse.” Moreover, wearing red, white and blue, waving an enormous American flag, and stomping your feet to mindless mantras is not patriotism. Wearing our colors does not ensure you are correct, it simply ensures you are colorful.

And let them not forget their QAnon albatross, magical thinking being the arable field for the psychological sleight of hand of autocrats.

“Stop the steal” is exemplary of the illusory truth effect; the repetition of falsehoods with such frequency that it leads to belief. At one point, 60% of Republicans clung to this discredited nonsense. Hannah Arendt in her 1971 essay “Lying in Politics” said of the liar in a democracy: “The more people he has convinced, the more likely he will end by believing his own lies.” The fabric of a believer’s reality can be torn asunder by the prolongation of exposure to methodical organized falsehood.

In psychiatry, “transference” is the displacement of the affect [emotions] from one person to another, the psychoanalyst being the target of the projected feelings, thoughts and wishes. In political life, the target is often a historical nemesis or a newfound adversary, real or imagined. Transference is a convenient, if not subconscious, method of displacing one’s own corruption and guilt on his opponent, including egregious actions … such as stealing an election.

Then there’s victimhood of the self. This is the bizarre everyone-is-picking-on-Donny mindset. Is it an extraordinary misplacement of American empathy? Or is it a self-pitying electorate identifying with the supposed victim?

Also central to the autocrats’ legerdemain is what is called obverse messaging: Regarding all the lies, believe what I say. When it comes to allegations of vicious autocratic delusion, well, just ignore those.

Seemingly sensible, Nikki Haley has problems facing the truth. According to her logic, candidate Trump does not cause chaos – chaos simply, like an unpleasant stench, follows him around. Such passivity will hole the Haley boat. Her only chance is speaking truth. Yet, Haley remains in the GOP tent of dissimulation and moral cowardice. Consider her most recent rhetorical faux pas: “We have never been a racist country.” This disregards basic logic; our own Constitution indemnified slavery, the sequelae of which persist today.

If you put your confidence in an inveterately lying, narcissistic sociopath, do not expect a positive outcome.

From Snyder’s “On Tyranny”: “By 1940, most Europeans had made their peace with the seemingly irresistible power of Nazi Germany. Influential Americans such as Charles Lindbergh opposed war with the Nazis under the slogan ‘America First.'” Sound familiar?

After the Nazis ingratiated then cudgelled their way to power, there followed a breathtakingly rapid collapse of civilized Europe: Austria; Czechoslovakia; Poland; Norway; the Netherlands; Belgium; France; Hungary; Romania. Including Italy and the Soviet Union as instigating allies, then Albania, Ethiopia, North Africa, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia. Passive chaos, you say?

Ergo, read history, think carefully, consider consequences. Trumpian-style mumpsimus is an old story. You will find the bloodied dross of previously great nations in that historic dustbin.

If your contention is that your government has failed you, I am in complete agreement. It is failing all of us. But book-burning our government on the pyre of fascism is not a solution. Do not be deceived. Fascism is on the march in the United States.

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