In The Atlantic today after yesterday's State of the Union, Megan Garber writes:
Trump, rather than Santos, is the avatar of his party. And Trump, rather than Santos, is the figure who most directly captures the truth of this country’s relationship with political lies. The former president’s falsehoods were told not only about himself—adding to the heady mythology of Trump the branded celebrity—but also about others. Trump lied about immigrants. He lied about Democrats. He lied about individuals and broad groups of people. He sowed misinformation, making the lies personal, and in that way sowed mistrust.
There is no excuse for Santos’s lies. But one might compare the harm they’ve done with the harm that Trump’s deceptions caused. Santos’s fabrications concerned, for the most part, his own past; they were mostly tools of self-aggrandizement. Trump’s lies, on the contrary, often were—and often have been, ever since he left office—weapons of denigration.
Santos is a diversion from all of that. He makes Americans’ tolerance for being lied to seem lower than it really is. This is his utility. The useful idiot, as a term and a trope, is thought to be an outgrowth of totalitarianism: Useful idiots are easily manipulated, giving the illusion of autonomy but serving, in the end, as mouthpieces for the party. Santos, as a useful liar, functions in a similar way but in reverse: Rather than amplifying the party line, he distracts from it. His fabrications give cover for the bigger lies. (A recent survey found that Santos is now better known nationally than all of his Republican House colleagues, except for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.) To follow the public censures of Santos is to feel momentarily reassured that truth still matters, that facts are still sacred. It is to feel that relief even as Americans’ political—and existential—fates are shaped every day by propaganda that spreads unchecked.
That propaganda made appearances during last night’s State of the Union address. The speech was interrupted by, among others, Marjorie Taylor Greene. (“Liar!” she shouted at Biden, making headlines if not much sense.) Greene’s own claims have been particularly hurtful: The representative who once endorsed the idea that the Parkland mass shooting was a “false flag” event also has a history of making anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim comments. Greene is also one of many members of Congress who denied the results of the 2020 presidential election. Last night, she was, in that, in good company. A significant portion of the speech’s in-person audience had endorsed the Big Lie. “On January 6, 2021,” my colleague David Graham noted last year, “147 Republicans, including eight senators, voted against certifying Joe Biden’s victory. All eight senators remain in office. Of the 139 representatives who objected, 124 ran for reelection, and 118 of those won.”And so, when Santos issued his “GASLIGHTING!” tweet last night, making his show of preening defiance, his diagnosis was accurate even if his target was not. Santos, though he has lost his committee assignments, remains in office. He is “expected” to face a House Ethics Committee investigation, CNN reported yesterday; the inquiry has yet to be started. This morning, Representative Nick LaLota of New York gave an interview to CNN. (He had been invited, presumably, because he was one of the Republicans who heckled the president during the State of the Union.) LaLota called Santos a “sociopath.” And then he complained, “Every time I have to come to something like this and talk about George Santos, I can’t talk about what Republicans ought to be doing instead.”
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