GUILFORD — The ongoing saga of George Santos feels like a complete rerun of the Trump show, highlighting another completely unqualified and morally bankrupt candidate who has become a face of the Republican Party.
The most interesting part of the Santos saga is not the abject failure of the Democratic Party to vet this scoundrel, not the inability of the local Republicans to see through his sorry tale, but the fact that he has succeeded in being seated and will probably remain in the House for two years or longer.
The fact that George Santos has become a pariah among the Republicans of Long Island is interesting, but those Republicans have no clout. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has shown us clearly, during his entire career as one of the weakest men with great power we will ever see, that the Republican Party has no interest in the concepts of honesty, integrity, doing the right thing for the people, or even trying to appear to care about these values.
Donald Trump, with his complete lack of any moral framework, has created a Republican Party that says all the unsaid stuff out loud now. Most Americans would not have believed, 10 years ago, that a person who bragged in a horribly vulgar video about molesting women, who has openly consorted with self-identified Nazis, who has clearly stated that democracy does not apply to him, could have been elected president by a large minority of voters.
Racial hatred — which was always present but quieter between the ugly period of Strom Thurmond et al. in the Senate and the current crop of some truly unsavory racists — has come to be a vital part of the Republican playbook. The war on women is all but openly declared.
And when these Republicans talk about a post-truth America, they mean it.
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The acceptance of bald-faced lies that are incredibly easy to disprove has become the hallmark of Republican politics.
One of the very few true statements Donald Trump made during his first presidential run was “I love the poorly educated.” For the most part, it is because people with no education are unlikely to have good research or critical thinking skills, and they often have low literacy levels.
To the surprise of exactly nobody, these people are often among those brought up in Christian home-schooling environments, or in far-right-wing academies, as well as in the underfunded public schools in the U.S. South.
The attack on teaching the truth about our country’s history and culture is a strong reason why Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is currently the darling of the far right. Refusing to allow students in his state to even vie for the college credit that comes with AP African American History is pretty astounding, but the idea that a teacher can be accused of a felony for having books in her classroom that are not on a statewide approval list is even more amazing.
At this point, Florida teachers, you are probably safest if the only books in your classroom are the Bible and the Little House series.
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I believe many of you reading this will identify as I do: as a lifelong learner. Most of the people I know who lean left make a strong effort to read, to have issue-based discussions, to look and think critically about the news and our government.
For as long as I can remember, the Republicans in leadership have attended elite universities — although Trump is a bit of an exception — and many went to the fanciest prep schools. And yet, these are the same people who, for as long as I can remember, accuse the left of being the “coastal elite.”
How is being a person who wants to understand the truth of how the world works — rather than being fed the lies of a stolen election, or “pizzagate,” or that John F. Kennedy Jr. did not die in a plane crash in 1999 and would become vice president to a reinstated Trump — make a person an elitist?
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The current anti-intellectual bent of the Republican party is not new at all, but like so much in our current era, it is more open and more extreme. When we hear that a sizable minority of Americans buy into the idea that we are all controlled by lizard people or that Hillary Clinton drinks the blood of kidnapped children, how can we see these people as sane, much less smart?
The first reaction of any thinking citizen is that these people must be incredibly dumb to buy into these obvious untruths.
But it might be beneficial for us to think of the far-right, racist antisemites who follow these conspiracies as hurt individuals who are searching for a way to feel part of something that they can completely embrace.
The stories I have read of those who have gone full QAnon, or even those who have become obsessed with the disproven stolen election narrative, are generally some pretty sad people — white, racist, homophobic, sad people.
But they are not people whom I feel sympathy for, as they have become part of a cult that is very dangerous, and in fact endangers the people I love and the environment I live in.
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So it is all the more vital for us to support teaching of critical thinking — how to read between the lines in the media. In fact, Fox News is very much bothered by a new New Jersey law — the first of its kind — making it compulsory for students to learn media literacy, from kindergarten until they graduate. Hopefully, some of us can work to create similar laws in our own states.
We also need to combat lies — openly and always, no matter who is telling them. And it is generally members of the cult that used to be a political party who are guilty.
If we are successful in making sure our voters are able to understand issues, know how laws are made and broken, and understand what really benefits the majority of citizens and not only the elites, we might have a chance to save our democracy.
And when the next huge crisis occurs, we need to be prepared to combat the far right’s push for martial law — fascism can often be presented as the answer to any problem of governance.
The time to make sure we are presenting the sane portion of the American public with the strong arguments for democracy — for a real multiracial democracy — is now.