By: Gaby Diaz and Brandon Worley
If you’re caught between the “How Could This Happen Here?” and “Of Course This Was Gonna Happen” matrices, you’re not alone. Rational Americans are indeed aghast and aware of the steps that brought us to the most dangerous attack on our nation since Fort Sumter.
Rational Americans are also bombarded with silly, sophomoric, and downright stupid rhetoric packed with logical flaws and fallacies.
Here’s a breakdown of the stupid shit you’re likely to read in the coming days and how to survive it.
Myth #1 “We have concerns about voter fraud!”
Why this is dumb: This is now the third time we’ve entertained this totalitarian tune, but let’s talk about the implications of how and who recycles the myth that there’s been widespread voter fraud because — in the end — there is no evidence.
Seditious Senator Ted Cruz was accused of the crime he now wants Congress to investigate. Over 60 American courts have laughed voter fraud suits out of their courtrooms. Republican Secretaries of State have shut Trump down again and again.
ACT I: Donald Trump accused Senator Ted Cruz of engaging in voter fraud during the 2016 Iowa primaries.
“Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified,” Trump tweeted.
This, of course, was a lie.
tl;dr: fool me once, shame on you.
ACT II: Donald Trump again fabricates falsehoods about widespread voter fraud in November of 2016 claiming there were 5 million illegal votes after he lost the popular vote.
“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” tweeted the newly elected President-elect Trump.
His own commission found no such evidence a year later.
Most of us heard Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger defy Trump’s 2020 claim of voter fraud on the phone last week, but way back in 2018, Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity faced the same pushback from Maine’s then-Secretary of State, Matthew Dunlap.
“It’s calling into the darkness, looking for voter fraud,” he explained.
“There’s no real evidence of it anywhere.”
tl;dr: fool me twice, shame on me.
ACT III: By August of 2020, Donald Trump’s fraud refrain was back again:
“The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged” the August 18th video reveals.
By now, we’re juggling the third, fourth, fifth time this clown has thrown a voter fraud ball into the air. This is the first time, however, that a majority of the Republican Party has played along by perpetuating these lies for political gain.
Leading up to the certification of the election — from Texas AG Ken Paxton’s absurd Supreme Court lawsuit and amicus brief to the final six Republican Senators led by Hawley and Cruz and the 121 Republicans in the House — these politicians lied to their constituents and set a dangerous precedent: any American election can be challenged and delayed using baseless conspiracy theories.
The true stupidity of their argument is claiming that 70-million Americans actually believe in this magical voter fraud. First, not everyone who voted for Trump buys into the election conspiracies. Second, even if “39% of Americans believe the election is rigged”…
GASP!
…I wonder why a bunch of people think that, Senator Cruz?
tl;dr: fool me thrice,…who is the fool?
Myth #2 “This is just like the BLM protests!”
Why this is dumb: this is a straightforward false analogy/ false equivalence/ faulty comparison:
One movement was inspired by evidence easily accessible to most Rational Americans. From the senseless killing of Tamir Rice to the murder of Breonna Taylor, the fight addressing police violence against Black Americans is a battle for Justice. There is evidence. We’ve all seen it.
The other movement is inspired by a fantasy of fraud. By a fragility. By false promises. By lies.
Perpetrators using this flimsy fallacy also commit the sin of the false dichotomy.
Why this is dumb: You can decry violence and still support addressing police brutality and racial injustice.
Was attempting to secede from the city of Seattle and claim an independent entity (CHAZ) a brilliant idea? No. Was taking over a police station and threatening a federal building ok? No!
I can decry that and criticize the insurrectionists of January 6th at the same time. It’s called bi-conceptualism.
While it’s certainly abhorrent to see anyone’s businesses vandalized or destroyed, let’s not equate that with the mob invasion of the United States Capitol, which at the time housed the entire line of succession outside the President.
tl;dr: violence is bad, and these movements are not the same.
Myth #3: These weren’t Trump supporters! It was ANTIFA!”
Why this is dumb: From comical Congressman Matt Gaetz to your fanatic Facebook friend, this dumb line is the easiest to deconstruct.
Antifa put on costumes…joined Trump’s rally…followed his cue to storm Congress…to interrupt an election result they wanted?
Lol.
This myth is just another in a long, long line of lies and obfuscation that always seeks to put the blame on “the Radical Left” and never on themselves.
“There’s no way we lost the election; they must have cheated!”
“I may say horrible and despicable things, but you calling me out on it and telling everyone how bad it is — that’s what is actually dividing everyone. Not me.”
“There’s no way all those hundreds of people storming the Capitol who were directly told to do so by the President and other Republicans were actual Trump supporters….no, they’re ANTIFA. Boom. Roasted.”
tl;dr: you break it, you buy it
Myth #4 “But, but, but…Muh First Amendment rights!”
Why this is dumb: It’s funny how there’s a strong correlation between those that so staunchly taut the glories of the 2nd Amendment and those that willfully misrepresent — or are just plain ignorant — about what exactly the 1st Amendment says and what exactly “freedom of speech” means.
Let’s make this very, very clear: the 1st Amendment protects those in the United States from having their speech punished or censored by the U.S. Government or its agents. That is all it entails when it comes to the much ballyhooed “freedom of speech” rally cry that has now apparently come to mean “I should be able to say whatever I want, wherever I want to — and there should never be any consequences for those words.”
Therefore, all of the following is absolutely true: Target can throw out of their store someone who walks in and starts raising hell about how aliens are conspiring with Hollywood to steal babies and sell them as slaves on Mars. A television production studio can decide it no longer wants to employ an actor or actress who constantly says or tweets reprehensible or bigoted trash. A publishing company can decide it no longer wants to publish a book authored by a sitting US Senator who actively incited insurrection at our nation’s capitol.
This also means Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and whatever else PRIVATELY OWNED websites and social media platforms there may be can also decide they no longer wish to host the dangerous propaganda and lies that spurned the first invasion of the capitol since the War of 1812.
Which brings us to what we like to call…
Myth #4a: “REPEALING SECTION 230 WILL STOP THESE LEFT-WING BIG TECH MOB COMPANIES FROM CENSORING OUR VILE SPEECH”
Let’s get something straight: Section 230 shields websites and hosting platforms from liability for what third-party users post or write on their websites. That is all. What this means is that a website cannot be held liable — either criminally or civilly — if a user posts something criminal or conspires to commit crimes using that private company’s platform. Say, for example, coordinating and conspiring an attack on the U.S. Government.
So if Section 230 were repealed, or amended, suddenly those companies could be financially or criminally charged for anything their users post: illegal or copyrighted material, criminal conspiracies, harassment, etc. You think there’s an issue with censorship now? Just see what happens then!
tl;dr: the First Amendment restricts the government’s ability to censor. That’s it.
Myth #5 “If we impeach him, it’ll further enrage his supporters”
Why this is dumb: Yes, this is exactly what I tell my students after a fight in the hallway. I explain to the injured party that if I punish the violent bully, it’ll just make his friends mad.
After 9/11, we also embraced this ideology and didn’t respond to the attack orchestrated by Bin Laden because we feared it would make his fellow terrorists angry.
Beyond the initial wave of stupidity which hits you with this one, this awful argument also assumes that all Trump voters condone the storming of the United States Capitol through violence to settle disputes. This slippery slope argument was particularly insulting coming from Chris Wallace of Fox News — a man who usually tries to make sense. Punishing the divisive rhetoric of the President is…too divisive?
The idea that we should not hold Trump accountable in any way is not just flawed — it’s dangerous. History reminds us what happens when you appease authoritarians. We must hold Trump accountable in the present because it helps preserve our future.
tl;dr: we don’t negotiate with terrorists.
Take care in the coming days, friends. Watching the scenes of insurrection from the Capitol is increasingly traumatizing and disturbing.
Laughing at the stupid arguments made to excuse this desecration is just good for the soul.