Published in Ha'aretz.
Inside the hall, people screamed that Clinton was a servant of Satan, and outside, people walked around with signs calling her a whore and a bitch.
Nitzan Horowitz
Cleveland OH. After every speech by Donald Trump, the American media conducts a comprehensive fact check. Its conclusions are harsh. His speeches are not just full of exaggerations and distortions, but of blatant lies. Here are a few examples from the last week.
* Trump claimed that the number of policemen killed in the line of duty is up about 50 percent compared to last year. The truth: 68 policemen have been killed so far this year, compared to 69 in the same period last year (fact-checker: New York Times).
* Trump asserted that Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he termed “one of the worst economic deals ever made by our country.” The truth: The agreement was negotiated and signed by a Republican president, the first George Bush (fact-checker: FactCheck website).
- Trump accused Barack Obama of having absorbed a “tremendous flow” of refugees from Syria. The truth: In 2015, the United States accepted 1,682 Syrian refugees. By comparison, Germany accepted 476,000 that year (fact-checker: NPR radio).
These are examples of lies whose goal is to describe life under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as hell. The list of distortions in his speeches is much longer. For instance, the claim that “Hillary created ISIS,” which he has repeated over and over.
Trump tops the rankings for political lies, produced by the website PolitiFact. Yet the exposure of these lies doesn’t hurt him. At the Republican convention, I asked many delegates what they thought of the fact that Trump lies incessantly. Some said they were more bothered by “Hillary’s lies,” others said that in order to win, one must do all kinds of things. I met almost nobody who was troubled by Trump’s systematic trampling of the truth. Incidentally, Clinton and Obama are at the bottom of the liars’ rankings, both with 14 percent of their statements deemed false, compared to 60 percent for Trump.
Acceptance of a culture of lies is one characteristic of a dystopian society. It fits with Trump’s dystopian vision, as described by Chemi Shalev (July 22). Trump’s speech at the convention was the cherry on top of a whole web of despicable attacks on Clinton. Inside the hall, people screamed that she was a servant of Satan, and outside, people walked around with signs calling her a whore and a bitch. This is another characteristic of dystopia: the dehumanization of one’s opponents. And when the opponent is a woman, it is joined by sexual humiliation.
Where does America go from here? True, Trump is the most unpopular candidate in the history of American polling. But even if he loses, how does America deal with the fact that millions support him? And what if he wins?
Many Republicans loathe Trump. They and others claim that the American system has enough checks and balances to restrain him. Moreover, they argue, the president doesn’t have that much power to affect daily life.
This argument is true in normal situations, but it’s utterly wrong with regard to a dystopia. A violent mood, a culture of lies, a general atmosphere of demagoguery leads to all bounds being broken. When the spirit of the commander grants a seal of approval for people’s basest urges to run wild, one can’t rely on the law enforcement system. It, too, will be drawn into the whirlpool.
It’s a tragedy that the battle against Trump depends on Clinton. She’s an unexciting candidate, very establishment, who trails behind her a string of scandals from the many years she and her husband spent in politics. It’s doubtful she ever imagined she would be in such a tight race. But this is the mission of her life, and what rests in the balance is weightier and more fateful that anything else that has been decided here for a very long time.