In a few related stories from the last day or so, it appears the Republican Party just can't help themselves with their dishonesty:
- Tom Nichols points out the disingenuousness of Republicans holding up Ukrainian aid, which "might count as one of the most devastatingly efficient and effective defense expenditures of American treasure in the history of the republic," until Ukraine presents an "exit plan:" "For Ukraine, the only exit strategy is survival, just as it was for Britain in 1940 or Israel in 1973. The Ukrainians will keep fighting, because the alternative is the enslavement and butchery of the Ukrainian people, and the end of Ukraine as a nation."
- Earlier today, the House passed the Senate's $886 billion defense reauthorization bill shorn of all its cultural hot button issues, despite all the bullshit Republicans and Fox News have fed their constituents about "the woke military."
- Meanwhile, House Republicans also passed a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden's non-existent corruption, despite knowing he hasn't got any and they won't find any in the inquiry.
Of course, as Charles Blow points out, Republicans are lying about these things because they see the hastening arrival of authoritarianism in the US and want jobs as gauliters:
Confidence in many of our major institutions — including schools, big business, the news media — is at or near its lowest point in the past half-century, in part because of the Donald Trump-led right-wing project to depress it. Indeed, according to a July Gallup report, Republicans’ confidence in 10 of the 16 institutions measured was lower than Democrats’. Three institutions in which Republicans’ confidence exceeded Democrats’ were the Supreme Court, organized religion and the police.
And as people lose faith in these institutions — many being central to maintaining the social contract that democracies offer — they can lose faith in democracy itself. People then lose their fear of a candidate like Trump — who tried to overturn the previous presidential election and recently said that if he’s elected next time, he won’t be a dictator, “except for Day 1” — when they believe democracy is already broken.
As I and others have said before, the Republican Party needs to change its policies or accept losing elections. But they don't believe that, so they're willing to torch our democracy to keep our lot from changing it for the better.