By Brigitte L. Nacos
The facts are clear: Russian operatives controlled by Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 presidential elections with the intent to help Donald Trump to become president. The highest U.S. intelligence officials, all appointees of this president, and the U.S. Senate’s intelligence committee controlled by a GOP chair and majority, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller agree on this.
Today, Putin admitted that he wanted Trump to win while, not surprisingly, denying any wrongdoing.
Even as he stood next to Russia’s authoritarian leader President Trump attacked the facts, repeated the lies he tweets day-in and day-out, and attacked alleged foes at home, while his actual words and body language showered admiration on the autocrat he obviously fears.
In her essay “Truth and Politics” Hannah Arendt wrote that “truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other.” Still, in spite of her claim that lies are in the tool box of most, if not all politicians, she was aware of the danger of lies trumping facts. Thus, she wrote, “The chances of factual truth surviving the onslaught of power are very slim indeed…”
That’s what Americans are faced with today: Will the truth or will lies prevail?
As the Mueller investigation moves ever closer to Trump’s campaign crew and perhaps his family, as the indictments multiply and the trial of Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort nears, the president fights the truth with lies. In her philosophical essay Arendt wrote, “Unwelcome facts possess an infuriating stubbornness that nothing can move except plain lies.”
Will President Trump manage to replace the unwelcome truth with lies?
What happened today in Helsinki was even in Trump’s dreadful playbook a new low for any president and worse yet than his bullying of NATO, the EU, and the British Prime Minister last week. The horror show was not an assurance of the Trumpian “America First” promise but rather a declaration of love to Putin and “Russia First.”
Yet, just like Trump declared the meetings in Brussels and the United Kingdom as historical success stories, he already praised himself for his success he achieved in Helsinki “for the American people.”
Will his advisers, will Republicans in Congress, will his appointees in the intelligence community continue to support this president as they did after each of his many outrageous missteps in the past?
Or will one truthteller or a group of truthtellers finally step forth and confront the liar-in-chief and the community of his enablers and supporters in the White House, in the administration, in the Congress, in states, cities, and counties with the facts, the truth?
Hannah Arendt wrote, “Where everybody lies about everything of importance, the truthteller…in the unlikely event that he survives, he has made a start toward changing the world.”
We can only hope and pray for such truthtellers and their survival. Otherwise, God help America as we love it.
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