LIES, DAMN LIES AND MEMES

 

Any of you who read any of the things I post will, first of all, have my complete sympathy. Secondly – they will know that I hate memes with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. I consider them the height of intellectual laziness – and I also think they represent the evolution of one of social media’s more dangerous manifestations. They not only allow people to pretend they have considered something deeply when they haven’t considered the matter at all – they allow the perpetuation of untruths in a way that spreads the lie like – dare I say it – an insidious virus.

Sometimes the shallowness of the post is easy to pick up. Just today I saw someone re-post a meme that stated the Lincoln Project is made up of ex-Republicans who are all (and I quote exactly) “Traders and Hypocrites”. I immediately recalled an old Star Trek episode where that scandalous old trader Cyrano Jones got the crew in trouble with a batch of tribbles. Is this the kind of trader that launched the Lincoln Project? Perhaps it was more in the line of an old fur trapper from the Wild West? Maybe a bunch of day traders attempting to short the market? 

What’s that you say? Oh “Traitor”...now I get it – an autocorrect problem, no doubt. Yeah – that one was pretty easy to pick out as not having originated from the brightest lighthouse on the rocky shore. But there are others that are not always quite so easy to spot – that hide their falsehoods under a veneer of authenticity – but which are, in fact, designed to wreak a little bit of havoc as well as lay the groundwork for even more. To, in essence, groom the populace for something truly evil.

I ran in to just such an example earlier today while going through Facebook. I’ve seen these sort of things before and I won’t have to spend a great deal of time to show you how it is wrong and misleading, but I do want you to spend some time understanding WHY you are seeing so many of these sorts of things now and why they are a harbinger of danger. This picture of a kid being bullied will show what I’m talking about:

Now, at first glance, the words in that picture sound almost smart.

Almost.

It’s actually drivel. There is nothing that is mutually exclusive or incompatible between democracy and a republican government. “Republics” were not established to protect the minority from the tyranny of democratic rule or the express will of the majority. While constitutions have that as ONE of their goals (at least the good ones) – they also have as a primary goal the preservation of the rights of an articulated and legal majority. That’s why the concept of elections (a key component of democracies) are also an integral part of most, if not all, republics. Indeed – if a republic is anything at its most basic level it is the ascendancy of public rights (hence the term rePUBLIC) over the private claims of a monarch, an oligarchy or an autocracy.

I was born, raised and am a citizen of one proud republic, the United States of America. I reside, raise my children and vote in another – The Irish Republic. Both of them are also democracies and neither has ever attempted to take my bicycle away. You don’t have to be a republic to be a democracy – although in the instance of both my homes they thought it best to take that route. That’s because neither wanted to have to live with the fact that in a monarchy – well, technically EVERYTHING belongs to the monarch. You know that stamp you put on a letter earlier. Well, that’s the Queen’s once it enters the Royal Mail. Oh, she’s agreed not to interfere – but she could if she really wanted to. The money has her picture on it – and that stamp does too. Just look at the attached example:

That is the Queen of Hearts – but that person up in the corner – that ain’t Alice. The lands of Britain are hers, the waters, the fish and the wildlife. There is a network of laws in a constitutional monarchy to paper that fact over – but they weren’t always there. Republics arose to address the all-pervasive powers of that sort of minority – not to guard against the “tyranny” of democratic voters. In fact, democracy was brought in as a tool to help address that concern.

Democracies can be “direct” (as in the town meetings that exist in many of the New England villages where I grew up) or “representative” such as is evidenced in bodies ranging from school committees to the United States House of Representatives. In neither case are those bodies established to blunt the force of democracy, but to express it. 

Yes, constitutions and other limiting legislation includes minority protections – but those too are not put in place to thwart democracy but to establish boundaries for its operation. So, bottom line, the United States is BOTH a democracy and a republic – and that’s not contradictory. Theoretically – I suppose a determined majority could still take your bike – but they’d have to amend the constitution to do it (or have the legislature declare your bike forfeited in a manner that stands up to constitutional scrutiny). But either way it’s not democracy that would be the culprit.

So, there you go with the “why this meme is misleading” analysis. But – what about the IMPORTANT part – the part that addresses WHY we’re seeing this sort of drivel now, in such increased numbers?

The answer is what should really scare you. These memes are designed to set the stage for disputing the upcoming election and using an illegal tool to overturn a legitimate result. THESE POSTS ARE THE VANGUARD OF A MOVEMENT TO MAKE THE UNTHINKABLE SEEM REASONABLE.

Here’s what the real motivation is. The U.S. Constitution, in Article 2, gives State legislatures the power to “appoint” in “such manner as they shall direct” the electors who will cast the votes for the offices of President and Vice President. Theoretically the State legislatures could, PRIOR TO ANY ELECTION, declare that the means of selecting electors for their State will be conducted solely by a vote of the legislature. They could, effectively, take the vote away from the citizens of their States.

This would, of course, lead to the burning to the ground of any legislature that attempted to do it. Can you imagine New Hampshire’s representatives saying, back in July – “Hey, voters, don’t worry about turning out on the 3rd of November – we got this”. Still, there is an argument that says this could happen. I think there is a better argument to say that it cannot, and an essentially irrefutable argument that says that any legislature which attempts to do so should have to stand for election themselves BEFORE any such decision would become effective.

But let’s say that the State had already gone through the exercise of holding an election and voting for a slate of electors the way that has been done for 200 years. Surely no one would claim that a State legislature could step in AFTER THE FACT and negate an election that had already been “directed” as the means by which electors would be appointed?

Would they?

Oh yeah – somebody would – and that is why you are seeing those memes all over the place.

The proliferation of “the purpose of a republic is to protect the minority” posts stems from a projected scenario where Republican controlled State legislatures effectively negate the results of State elections and appoint their own slate of electors (which would obviously vote Republican). So, under this scenario, if Texas were to spring a surprise and go for Biden the Republican majority legislature would simply find some way to dispute that result and appoint Republican electors. This could be based on a number of factors, such as “there was voter fraud”, “there are questions about whether the mail-in ballots received were valid” or “we simply don’t have time to count ALL the ballots so therefore we have to make a call at the legislative level”. There are multiple ways in which someone could seek to justify the act – but the bottom line is that they are all just excuses for overriding the will of the people as expressed through the democratic process. That would ordinarily be seen as a damning accusation – so these memes seek to lay the groundwork for countering that argument by damning that same process in advance.

All of the excuses listed above are outrageous and go against accepted norms – so that is why these memes seek to alter the norms. Anticipating that the acts of State legislatures attempting to do something like this will be deemed “undemocratic” these posts seek to undermine the concept of “democracy” itself. Suddenly, magically, the United States isn’t a “democracy” at all – it’s a “constitutional republic” (even though there is no real difference). Suddenly, “democracy” is not the bedrock of our government but is some sort of foreign construct that is designed to justify taking your property – so hold on to your bicycles against that threat of democracy folks. Those folks who won the vote aren’t just out to elect the candidate of their choice, they’re out to take your stuff. Those people who want to deny the results of the election? Well, they’re just trying to help you keep what’s yours. So, calm down and let your “Republican” (this time with a capital “R”) friends protect your interests by subverting the will of that oppressive majority.

The thing that disturbs me the most is that I do not believe that most of the people posting these memes currently support anti-democratic positions, I do not believe that these people wish to undo the time honored role of elections in our republican form of government, I do not believe they want to grant a small group of legislators the power to override the results of an election. I think they probably feel that this is just a way of expressing a legitimate position, which is that the constitution should seek to protect the rights of minorities against the oppression of majorities. That, in and of itself, is a correct and proper stance to take.

The problem is that the meme isn’t really expressing that view – it is getting at something much more radical and wrong-headed – that democracy and republics are incompatible and that it is therefore OK to seek to ignore the results of popular elections. That has nothing to do with the persecution of minorities. Elections aren’t oppressive, republics aren’t designed to override the majority and constitutions differentiate between protecting the rights of minorities and allowing the will of the people to express itself.

However, having once posted the meme my experience is that people then tend to feel that any backtracking from what it says is not a clarification but a surrender – and people hate to surrender. The meme, almost involuntarily, becomes the default position – even though, as I’ve stated thousands of times – memes are the most mindless, unthinking, lazy, stupid and unproductive means of expression there is. Yet they have become the primary means of conveying political thought – which is sort of like defending a Hallmark card as being better literature than a Shakespearean sonnet. 

The bottom line is this – do not fall for this nonsense. By believing it you are being groomed in the same fashion that a pedophile goes after kids. Those things that you were raised to believe in – the value of democracy, the sanctity of elections, the idea that the form of government we have supports those propositions – those were and are correct. Don’t get fooled, don’t get played and don’t get set up.

Don’t take your political philosophy from a greeting card.