Inconvenient Truth Behind Trump’s Big Lie

Image by Vincent Diamante, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Renowned historian T. Snyder recently wrote an article “January 6: The facts” in which he tried to figure out how Mr. Trump’s Big Lie led to attempt to overturn the election results in 2020-21.

The fact is Mr. Trump has been lying and cheating all his life, it just became more apparent during his presidency, which ended up by the events of January 6, 2021, when the President of the US (!) tried to organize a coup after losing the election.

I like the term “Big Lie”, although each point of view reflects only a part of the truth, and there is an Inconvenient Truth behind Mr. Trump's Big Lie. American people do not see/want to see it so far and I decided to share my perspective.


There is a slight lull in the case after the release of Jan. 6 Select House Committee’s final report. The majority in the House of Representatives is being passed over to the Republicans now and they will apparently level the Committee's conclusions and prevent Mr. Trump from punishment.

Big Lie (D. Trump) must be punished and now it is the Dept. Of Justice’s responsibility. Likewise, many of the former president's henchmen should be punished, too (Bloomberg counted 253 key Republicans who backed up his false claims).


There is an impression after findings of the Jan. 6 Select House Committee that Republicans are basically "bad", Democrats are "good", and now the battle between good and evil is starting again. No.

In fact, Democrats are not much better than Republicans and the struggle is really between “the bad” and “the very bad”. Americans always choose the lesser of two evils and now it happens to be the Democratic Party again. Before it was the Republican Party, but D. Trump looked bad as the president of the US and most Americans preferred the "lesser evil" in the form of the Democrats in 2020.

Meanwhile Mr. Biden’s disapproval as the President (and thus disapproval of DP) grew from 32% to 55% during 2021-2022 and politics in the country will probably be dominated again by the Republicans and their president from 2025. Two major American parties will again swap their places.


The inconvenient truth that is behind Trump's Big Lie is that two major parties are twin brothers which have monopolized the political life of the country since the 1850s and parasitized together the economy which was created by American people. They grow rich, mimic democracy, regularly replacing each other at the helm of the country and have no idea where to go, but the Americans don't see that and constantly elect their representatives to govern the country. This is why the "lesser evil" is constantly destroying the US: the problems pile up, the conflicts escalate and the country degenerates. Both parties have nothing to offer to their voters except old boring fuss about unsolvable issues of corruption, inflation, health care, environment and secondary ones of LGBT, firearms, crimes, voter fraud, immigration, abortion, marijuana, etc.


Fans of democracy believe that political struggle between different parties ensures the movement of a country in the right direction. No, a country doesn’t necessarily move and not necessarily in the right direction. Democracy, like everything else, has its own shortcomings.

A good example of a country which moves in opposite directions as a result of democratic elections is Italy which has had 69 governments (an average of one every 1.11 years) since 1945. I think this is why Italy is in the permanent political crisis for many years. A good example of stopped and stagnant country is democracy in the US, where two major political parties of roughly the same weight pull the blanket on themselves which brings only the sense of national unease.

Truth can really be born in a dispute, but only if the parties are willing to find it and listening to each other. If each side already found its truth and listened only to itself, there is no dispute anymore, it’s a quarrel. The only truth which can be born in such a “dispute” is chasing both disputants out.

I have observed similar government-opposition relations and elections of "lesser evil" in Ukraine for many years and understood the simple truth which can be applied to almost any country:

1. Government and opposition are essentially two sides of the same coin (the elite).
2. They are almost irremovable, but may change the name of the party, not personalities.
3. They are elected for the common good, but work only for themselves, which means against (!) the common good.
4. They say one thing, think about another one and do the third on the grounds of political expediency.
5. They are equally short-sighted, incompetent, hypocritical and cynical.
6. Their common goal is to stay in power as long as possible to get more financial gain at the expense of the citizens.
7. Life changes and time after time they have to swap their places at the helm of the country.
8. They agree to fight peacefully and only in public since they know they will have to swap their places.

Republican Party has stopped fulfilling point 8 since presidential election 2016 and contradictions within American elite and society sharply exacerbated. That's really Mr. Trump's work. Maybe his role as the president of the US was to show to the Americans how low their elite had stooped. A fish rots from the head and Mr. Trump during his presidency must have passed on to many RP members his personal qualities - love of lies, hypocrisy, arrogance, boorishness, meanness, cynicism, cowardice, and treachery.


It is fair to say though, that many members of the Republican Party do not share Mr. Trump's life values, i.e. the party is not completely rotten like United Russia, for example, which is Mr. Putin's pocket party. In that sense, Mr. Trump certainly envies Mr. Putin.

It's also good to note, that US midterm voters rejected some 2020 election deniers who had supported Mr. Trump’s false claim and the Republican “red wave” had never happened.


Т. Snyder sees the Big Lie in Mr. Trump’s statements because he was deliberately planning a coup d'état after losing the 2020 election. That’s right, and there is a great temptation to pin everything just on Mr. Trump, but:
1. An attempted coup should also be pinned on at least a third of the Republican Party since nearly 1 in 3 Republican candidates for statewide office supported false election claims.
2. Democrats are also responsible for the situation since they ran the country from 2009 to 2017 (Obama’s administration). Mr. Trump alone couldn’t divide the nation so effectively within 4 years, so everything has been prepared for him before by mismanagement of the country by Democrats, in particular.
3. The people of the US are to blame for permanently electing representatives of both parties to the government and only a few (now about 19%) see that things are getting worse in the country just because of the bad leadership. The next step in the understanding may be the realization of the fact that both parties are equally incompetent and fail to govern. There is a high probability, however, that this understanding will never come to Americans.


I have written before that all people can be divided into fools and scoundrels. The first do silly or nasty things because of misunderstanding the essence of the event/process/object, and the second understand everything, but do dirty tricks deliberately. I don't want to offend anyone here and ask you to consider the words "fools" and "scoundrels" in this article as the special terms.

Mr. Trump is almost constantly lying because he benefits from that, and he is therefore a scoundrel. Many Republicans support his lies because of the party solidarity and they are therefore scoundrels, too, and timeservers. Many Americans support the Republican Party without seeing (not willing to see) these lies, and are therefore (excuse me) fools.

Democrats (President Biden, for example) also lie to themselves and others about corruption, inflation, etc., apparently because of misunderstanding the crux of the matter, so they and their followers are (excuse me again) fools.

Look at the next example and decide for yourself who is a fool and who is a scoundrel: today's Congressional gridlock made by far-right Republicans may end up with government shutdown. The federal legislative branch of power cannot or doesn’t want to work. Why then is it needed?

And where can the country go under the leadership of feuding scoundrels and fools?


Republicans and Democrats have created a false picture of wellbeing for their citizens. They spread myths that the US is rich, wise and close-knit country, everyone has equal opportunities and is equal before the law, the politicians are elected by the people, serve them and are a part of them. The politicians also lead the country in the right direction due to democracy and fight along the way against Republicans/Democrats/Russians/Chinese/terrorists, corruption, inflation, epidemics, climate change and natural disasters, but they cannot give to their people a happy life so far since all the above enemies get in their way. I personally see the opposite in the country, but the elites benefit from maintaining those myths in the people’s minds.

Myth-making is practiced by any government, especially if it has nothing else to offer. Similarly, it works more or less in many other countries in the world. For example, Mr. Putin has inculcated many different myths into the minds of Russians over the years, and due to them and the tacit consent of Russian people, started a criminal, bloody war in Ukraine which had already taken many lives of his co-citizens and would quite soon destroy Russia.

The main lesson the US can learn from the Russians now is that the bigger lie is, the more everyone has to pay for taking active or passive part in it.


Now the myth of equality before the law is seriously tested. If Mr. Trump goes to jail - that would be fair, which means the justice is not a myth and America as a whole is rather healthy than sick. In that case, the collapse of the country is postponed, but not eliminated from the plan.

If Mr.Trump doesn’t go to jail, he will influence the political life of the country (even without being the president) and aggravate all the inner conflicts, thus bringing the collapse of the country closer. I don't really like to predict the near future because human blindness and stupidity are infinite, but I think the truth is, as always, somewhere in the middle. Mr. Trump probably won't be sentenced (i.e. equality of Americans before the law really is a myth), but RP will be smart enough not to nominate him for President 2024, and promote, for example, Ron DeSantis instead. However, anything can happen and Mr. Trump as president certainly will bring down the US much faster than as a rank-and-file member of the Republican party.


All the above is the real picture of political status quo in the US, which allows the American elites to live comfortably at the expense of the American people. Here lies the main conflict, which will tear the country apart sooner or later. No one can change the outcome of the events. What happens is what happens, and nothing else can. From this point of view, I have always liked the myth that dominates all people on the planet: the myth of free will.

I cannot say which party is more dangerous for the existence of the US as a country. Actually, both are - separately (because of their incompetence) and together (because of their conflicts and subsequent dysfunction of the government).

Even more dangerous thing is the indifference and blindness of the people of the US. Only Americans can influence their (?!) parties, no one else can. After all, the people are the ones who elect if not the president, but at least the members of the US Congress, which is in gridlock now.


P.S. Dear Reader! I am very much interested in your opinion on the subject of this article. Please, write a comment or ask a question if you want to clarify something.
Yours,
Igor Chykalov