And so, presumably, is the rest of the Trump-wing of the conservatives, although I haven’t the time to explore. Erickson’s latest is a devious defense of the former President and his boxes of goodies, devious because Erickson hardly mentions the former President at all.
Instead, he goes after social media sites, claiming – and maybe he’s right – most social media sites are biased against conservatives, but even that’s a head feint. For those who’ve been watching national scandals for years, his final target is unsurprising: the bastion of conservatism, the FBI.
Why?
Because the FBI is the current greatest threat to Trump. They’ve found, with the help of the National Archives, that he took documents with him when he was kicked out of office by the voters, and some of those documents are Top Secret – or worse. He lied on a response to a subpoena. He’s alleged to have demanded all the documents back, that they’re his and not the government’s, all in violation of settled Federal law on the matter.
And, of course, there’s the Why of the matter. Not Why did the FBI investigate, but the Why did Trump take – perhaps, more accurately, steal – those documents? The man’s allegedly a billionaire, so it seems unlikely he’d be peddling them to potential customers. And the American capitalist system is the source of Trump’s prestige and power, so it’s hard to see his destroying that in some haze of hatred. Right?
But what if Chad Bauman is right? That Trump thinks, if you’ll excuse my macabre sense of humor, all that matters is He Who Dies Richest Wins?
That would certainly explain pilfering important documents for later sale to the highest bidder. And not caring about the future, given his age. And, no doubt, a number of other puzzling issues.
But as Erickson attacks the liberals and Twitter, he has a slip up. I don’t know if it’s him or if someone told him to write to a collection of talking points, but it’s the sort of slip up that makes it easy not to take him seriously.
TikTok is a Chinese intelligence operation wherein the Chinese harness woke Americans to induce our children into transgender surgeries, all while compiling a facial recognition database. It is the most dangerous social media site on the planet. Americans have allowed their children to be willing users of a Chinese surveillance system.
That entire last sentence implies that “Americans” have full knowledge of TikTok: its owners, goals, and internal policies.
And they don’t.
Persuasion is too often treated as a big chess game, where the moves and configuration of the chessboard are known at all times, and those performing the argument are boning for a position of superiority over their opponents and their allies: Look at how smart I am and how dumb they are!
But it’s just not so. I doubt 5% of American parents know more about TikTok than that it’s a social media site their kids use. That five percent may know it’s Chinese-owned, but almost none of them are aware of facial-recognition ambitions, since at least Wikipedia is also unaware of them; for all I know, Erickson is indulging a conspiracy theory.
As the far-right chews off its own leg? Nyah, too obvious.
But, conspiracy theory or not, it’s part and parcel of Erickson’s real goal, alienating conservatives from the very FBI which has stood in their corner during the Hoover years, and is often considered to have a conservative leaning, as one expects from law enforcement. It’s sad that he thinks he needs to make this case, but with Trump now in imminent danger of arrest and trial, and – it’s no longer unthinkable – eventual execution, he may think it’s necessary to throw the FBI and its Republican director, Christopher Wray, under the bus.
In the end, though, there’s an unmistakable dodging of responsibility. Trump is, by most accounts liberal and conservative, in trouble up to his neck. As a product of the conservative movement, his condemnation also condemns the movement. But Erickson will have none of it. He’ll blame the FBI, he’ll blame the social media sites, anyone but the conservative movement.
And it’s dishonest not to critically examine the movement’s social dynamics when they can produce and elect to the Presidency such a terminally toxic person as Trump. Erickson’s really embraced his role as a propagandist, hasn’t he? And, being one, it reduces his effectiveness.
