The former president recognized that the fact of an investigation was far more important than the results. It worked with the Benghazi investigation, about which House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy was accidentally honest, and in the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, which didn’t produce charges but did hobble her presidential campaign. By the time Trump was extorting Volodymyr Zelensky by withholding defense supplies in 2019, all Trump wanted was for Ukraine to announce an investigation into Hunter Biden. He didn’t even care whether it actually happened, because the talking point is what he needed.
Each successive new gambit offers the tantalizing prospect that the crooked behavior everyone has seen on public display from Trump over the past seven years is somehow actually the product of nefarious plotting by his opponents. Now Trump is on to a new battle over his alleged absconding with presidential records, including highly sensitive information, to Mar-a-Lago. Once again, he has claims of hoaxes. Once again, they don’t hold water. Yet hope springs eternal among MAGA backers, well fertilized by manure spread by the former president. Trump’s vindication can never be failed; it can only be delayed.
The whole premise of MAGA is that Democrats are so corrupt, so evil, so beyond the moral pale that whatever wild accusations are made about Democrats' crimes only scratch the surface of the dark horror that lies below. Just wait--it will all come out. It's just a matter of time before it all comes to light.
"Sure," those on the religious right argue, "Trump might have crossed the line here and there, but whatever he's done is nothing compared to what these demon-possessed Democrats have done." That the evidence supports the opposite, that more corrupt Republicans get caught than Democrats by a fairly wide margin does not matter because, they think, the Dems are just cleverer in avoiding getting caught or the Liberal Media in collusion with the Deep State insures that they don't.
The first step toward moral maturity is owning your projections, or as the gospel puts it, "Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but fail to notice the log in your own eye?" That's really at the heart of the problem for those on the religious right in this country. They think they are morally righteous when in fact they haven't even taken most basic steps toward achieving it. Matthew goes on: "You hypocrite! First take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
Seeing clearly is not something that happens much in MAGA world because they are so easily manipulated to see what is not there. MAGA folks are too obsessed with seeing evil in the Other. And so they have not the moral maturity or aptitude to recognize that that they see the Other not as they are but through the lens of their own unowned wickedness.
I was talking about Tolkien in my previous post and about how 'fantasy' often finds a way to urgently illuminate truths in a way that plain prose or realistic fiction cannot. This passage from The Silmarillion is about how the fallen Valar Melkor works with ordinary, decent folk who lack the discernment that comes with moral maturity--
Long was he at work, and slow at first and barren was his labour. But he that sows lies in the end shall not lack of a harvest, and soon he may rest from toil indeed while others reap and sow in his stead. Ever Melkor found some ears that would heed him, and some tongues that would enlarge what they had heard; and his lies passed from friend to friend, as secrets of which the knowledge proves the teller wise. Bitterly did the Noldor atone for the folly of their open ears in the days that followed after.
When he saw that many leaned towards him, Melkor would often walk among them, and amid his fair words others were woven, so subtly that many who heard them believed in recollection that they arose from their own thought. Visions he would conjure in their hearts of the mighty realms that they could have ruled at their own will, in power and freedom. . . .
J.R.R Tolkien, The Silmarillion, p. 69
The manipulation of the religious right, Qanon, and others in MAGA world by Melkorian lies is as old as the hills. Liberals, of course, are not immune from such manipulation, but their vulnerabilities lie in their seduction by the material abundance produced by techno-capitalism. "Let the Invisible Hand do its thing," whispers Melkor. "Don't interfere or you'll make things worse. Leave it to the Hand. All shall be free; all shall be well." And way too many Liberals in the cultural and political spheres kneel to the Hand.
The delusions of the Cultural Right might lead to the end of democracy in the short term, but the delusions of the Cultural Left might lead to the end of humanity in the long term. So in this sense there is moral parity: the delusions and moral immaturity of both work hand in hand to paralyze the collective will to find a cure for what most deeply ails us. But in order to be able to deal with the long-term threat, we need a vibrant, healthy, democratic open society--a society that is open to allow remedies to arise bottom up, and which has the discernment to know which remedies are delusional and which might actually work.