Can one lie destroy a country? Yes. One did a hundred years ago. Germany lost WWI on the battlefield, but the generals in charge made up a myth to exonerate themselves - they lied - they created the myth that Germany lost because it was stabbed in the back - the Dolchstosslegende, or stab-in-the-back myth.
Jochen Bittner writes:
Military officers, monarchists and right-wingers spread the myth that if it had not been for political sabotage by Social Democrats and Jews back home, the army would never have had to give in....In the face of humiliation and unable or unwilling to cope with the truth, many Germans embarked on a disastrous self-delusion: The nation had been betrayed, but its honor and greatness could never be lost....It was also at the heart of Nazi propaganda, and instrumental in justifying violence against opponents. The key to Hitler’s success was that, by 1933, a considerable part of the German electorate had put the ideas embodied in the myth — honor, greatness, national pride — above democracy."
And today in America we have a president, and his avid cult, creating another lie to cover up for a humiliating loss. They claim that Trump actually won the 2020 election and only lost it because of massive voter fraud by Biden. This is a total, one hundred percent, obvious lie. Republican governors of close race states have certified the accuracy of the votes in their states - Georgia for example. They are not Biden supporters, they are avid Trumpsters, and even they have to admit the truth that Donald Trump simply lost an election.
Every two years half of the people who run for office lose. Just like Trump. But Trump is some combination of insane and malicious. He refuses to accept reality. And some of his cult doesn't understand that he is lying. Some people actually believe the election was stolen.
And, like Germany in the 1930s, the Trump cultists can take that false myth, that the Trump and they were cheated, and use it to justify anything, certainly to justify cheating in future elections, certainly to do violence to those who oppose them, certainly to establish a right wing tyranny by any means possible.
I hope and pray that most on the right are just humoring the pathetic failure in the White House, and that we don't follow Germany's 1930s footsteps. But if we don't do so it won't be from any lack of effort by the loser in the White House to make excuses for his loss and make himself into a future American despot.
