Why Does Trump Continually Lie About the Elections And the Size of the Crowds At His Inauguration?
January 24, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
For humanity to advance beyond a state in which “might makes right”—and where things ultimately come down to raw power relations—will require, as a fundamental element in this advance, an approach to understanding things (an epistemology) which recognizes that reality and truth are objective and do not vary in accordance with, nor depend on, different “narratives” and how much “authority” an idea (or “narrative”) may have behind it, or how much power and force can be wielded on behalf of any particular idea or “narrative,” at any given point.
Bob Avakian, BAsics 4:10
Trump seems to be fixated on proving that he had a larger turnout at his inauguration than Obama (he did not) and that he won the popular vote of the election (which in fact he lost by nearly 3 million votes). These are easily proven facts—the first by photo comparisons, statistics of subway ridership on the days of the inauguration, etc.—and the second by the insistence of the mainly Republican state governments that the illegal votes Trump claims were cast for Clinton simply were not. So why does he keep doing this?
The most common explanation is that he is sick—a pathological narcissist who cannot tolerate the idea that he is not the most beloved person ever to walk the earth.
Trump is a sociopath. Yet there is a method to this sort of madness. And that method is fascism.
The first and main thing to understand is that Trump is mainly focused on speaking to, and continually firming up, his hard core of true believers. He is reassuring them that they and—and really he—represent the “real Americans,” the vast majority, and that the “liberal elites” and the groups of people whom he continually demonizes and delegitimizes (immigrants, Muslims, Black people, etc) are lying to frustrate and prevent Trump and his followers from getting “their rightful due.” He is trying to make them impervious to the actual reality of things, to objective facts, and instead providing them “alternative facts,” in the words of his adviser Kellyanne Conway, through which they can sustain their faith. He is preparing them as a fighting force, if need be, to defend him.
The second purpose for this madness is to provide further rationalization to prevent Black and Latino people from voting, through laws whose one and only purpose is to deny the right to vote to Black and Latino people, such as voter ID laws and forbidding ex-felons from voting (which affects Black and Latino people disproportionately due to discrimination in all spheres of American life, especially but not only the criminal “justice” system).
Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, has pleaded with Trump to not do this because it will delegitimize the electoral system. And that leads to the third reason. Trump announced in advance that if he lost, he would not recognize the results since his loss would prove that the elections were rigged. There is little doubt that he would have waged a no-holds-barred battle to get in power. Looking down the road, he does not intend to be deterred in his “mission” by the matter of elections; and he is even now preparing public opinion to invalidate any election that might not go his way, presuming that elections continue to be held.
Last point: people say we should not “normalize” Trump—and that is correct. But the main meaning of that must not be his narcissistic madness, but the fact that he is a FASCIST.
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