by W.D. Ehrhart
I recently drove on a major thoroughfare through Chester County, Pennsylvania, one of the most reliably Republican counties in the United States. Somewhat to my surprise I did see more than a smattering of Harris/Walz signage along with signs for Pennsylvania’s incumbent Senator Bob Casey. But by far the overwhelming political signage was for Trump, Trump/Vance, and Casey’s challenger, David McCormack.
There were stretches of highway with dozens of Trump signs every five feet. Most amazing of all were signs that read: “Trump: Safety; Harris: Crime,” “Trump: Low Taxes; Harris: High Taxes,” and “Trump: Low Prices; Harris: High Prices.” All three of these false assertions fly in the face of actual facts, but facts seem to get no traction with millions and millions of my fellow citizens.
Instead, the lies that tumble out of Donald Trump’s mouth like water from a high-pressure firehose—reinforced by his shameless running mate and the talking heads of Fox News—are gobbled up and swallowed whole by the MAGAMillions.
Thus, though the false and fictional tale has been debunked over and over again by every responsible source, including the Republican mayor of Springfield, Ohio, and the Republican governor of the state of Ohio, millions of Americans still believe that Haitian immigrants are stealing pet dogs and cats, and eating them.
This would be humorous, comical, sidesplittingly hilarious except that the people who believe this are voters, and they believe that these Haitians are illegally in this country—along with rapists, murderers, and terrorists—and have come here at the personal invitation of Kamala Harris, who (we are told in Republican attack ads) doesn’t care about you or me or the United States of America, but actually works for the destruction and ruin of this country.
In fact, the Biden Administration was poised to pass legislation that would have significantly limited both legal and illegal immigration and increased law enforcement along our southern border until Trump lobbied Republicans in Congress to kill the bill. Rather than helping to solve the problem, he chose to leave it festering so that he could campaign on it. Which he has done in spades.
More recently, he has flagrantly and falsely accused the Biden Administration of diverting Hurricane Helene relief funds to benefit illegal immigrants. In fact, Trump himself diverted Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to illegal immigrants back in 2019. But facts don’t matter to the MAGAMobsters who are going to vote for Trumpelstilskin come Hell or High Water.
And speaking of High Water, at least some flood-ravaged survivors of Helene have bought into Trump’s lies so thoroughly that they have chased away FEMA relief workers trying to provide assistance, even brandishing firearms, and threatening them with bodily harm.
Where does one even begin to wade into the swamp of lies gushing from the Trump campaign and what has become the Retrumplican Party? He continues to insist that he actually won the 2020 election; that he bore no responsibility for what took place on January 6th, 2021; that Kamala Harris only in recent years began to acknowledge her Black heritage; that Harris never worked at McDonald’s; that Harris is in favor of reinstituting the military draft; that Biden sent Harris to Russia in a failed attempt to persuade Putin not to invade Ukraine; that Harris was the first candidate to withdraw from the 2020 Democratic primaries; that the Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade was supported by “everybody,” including “every Democrat”; that Trump was named “Man of the Year” in Michigan before he entered politics; that he appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s final program; that he never said of Hillary Clinton: “Lock her up”; and that he did not have sex with porn star Stormy Daniels (although he was found guilty of paying her hush money by a jury of twelve of his peers, a trial that he says was rigged).
But my favorite—if one can use that term in such disgusting and terrifying circumstances—is his claim that children are going off to school, having surgery done by the school without the parents’ permission or knowledge, and coming home as the opposite gender. These are Trump’s actual words: “The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”
Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, is often credited with saying that if you tell a Big Lie often enough, people will believe it. But the German expression—große Lüge—was first used by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 book Mein Kampf to describe how people could be induced to believe a colossal lie because they would not believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
Retrumplicans get very upset when you compare their Golden Boy (my daughter calls him the Orange Cheeto) to Hitler, and in some ways the comparison is not accurate. Hitler essentially relied on one Big Lie built on how the Jews were responsible for the degradation of Germany at the end of the Great War.
But Donald Trump spews so many lies—big, small, and in-between—that it is all-but-impossible to refute them. One can hardly even keep track of them. I’ve barely scratched the surface here.
What really distresses and depresses and baffles me, however, is not the behavior of Donald J. Trump, who has been all his life a narcissistic, misogynistic, self-serving, dishonest huckster par excellence, who spent most of a Town Hall dancing to “YMCA”; and spoke for ten minutes during a campaign rally on the size of Arnold Palmer’s penis.
What I do not understand are all those millions of my fellow citizens who gobble up his garbage as if they were starving survivors on a desert island.
What do these people see when they look out at the world? What fears fuel them? What prejudices and imagined grievances and failed ambitions motivate them? How have they become so damaged and twisted up inside that they can believe Haitian immigrants are eating cats and public middle schools are performing gender-changing surgery?
Or even that Donald Trump offers safety and lower taxes while Kamala Harris offers crime and higher taxes?
Only days ago, the editorial director of a syndicate of community newspapers where I live rejected the essay you have just read, arguing that comparing Donald J. Trump to Adolph Hitler would only put people off, and saying that I will convince no one to change his or her vote by accusing half the American electorate of being stupid.
But comparing Hitler’s use of lies and his blaming all Germany’s ills on the Jews to Trump’s use of lies and blaming all America’s ills on illegal immigrants is merely acknowledging the obvious. And the fact that this election is even close provides overwhelmingly convincing evidence that Trump’s supporters really are stupid, and no amount of reason or logic will persuade them to do anything other than vote for disaster.
One can only hope that enough thoughtful, sensible, grounded-in-reality voters show up at the polls on November 5th to offset and cancel the MAGAMob. I dare not even imagine what life will be like if things go badly that day.
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W. D. Ehrhart is a retired Master Teacher of History & English, and author of a Vietnam War memoir trilogy published by McFarland.
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