The horrible price of lies, paranoia and distrust

It has been a horrific week. The gruesome slayings of Israelis by Hamas militants are ricocheting around the world, testing the skeins of civility even on the streets of New York. Meanwhile, Putin’s brutality continues to wrench the heart of Europe.

America’s capacity to govern itself is also being tested. The U.S. House of Representatives continues without a speaker — the person essential for the chamber (and therefore much of the rest of government) to function, and who is next in line after the vice president in presidential succession.

Yesterday, Steve Scalise narrowly won his party’s nomination — but not by enough votes to cinch the job without votes by Democrats, who under no circumstances would (or should) vote for someone as speaker who refused to certify Biden as president.

The House will reconvene today, though no votes are scheduled, suggesting that Scalise is still trying to win support from the backers of Jim Jordan, the other leading Republican candidate for speaker (who also refused to certify Biden).

Trump endorsed Jordan in the current speaker contest, so presumably much of what Scalise is doing today is trying to negotiate with Trump and his allies and surrogates.

Let’s be clear. Neither Scalise nor Jordan rises to even Kevin McCarthy’s low threshold of competence or concern for the public good.

Both voted against certifying Biden president, both opposed Biden’s request for additional military aid to Ukraine, and both are threatening to shut down the government on November 17 if they don’t get whatever House Republicans demand.

A shutdown would imperil the well-being of tens of millions of Americans.

In late September, Trump urged House Republicans to shut the government if they weren’t able to defund Trump’s criminal trials. “Republicans in Congress can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social media site, calling it “the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots.”

I thought of Trump and this mash of self-serving Republicans when I read Israeli historian Yuval Noah Narari’s piece in yesterday’s Washington Post, seeking to explain why Israel was unprepared for Saturday’s onslaught.

Narari wrote that Israel has been:

“governed by a populist strongman … who is a public-relations genius but an incompetent prime minister. He has repeatedly preferred his personal interests over the national interest and has built his career on dividing the nation against itself. He has appointed people to key positions based on loyalty more than qualifications, took credit for every success while never taking responsibility for failures, and seemed to give little importance to either telling or hearing the truth.
The coalition [he] established has been by far the worst. It is an alliance of messianic zealots and shameless opportunists, who ignored [the nation’s] many problems — including the deteriorating security situation — and focused instead on grabbing unlimited power for themselves. In pursuit of this goal, they adopted extremely divisive policies, spread outrageous conspiracy theories about state institutions that oppose their policies, and labeled the country’s serving elites as “deep state” traitors.”

The point is this: Whether named Netanyahu, Trump, or Putin, when authoritarian leaders gain power by dividing the public, spreading baseless conspiracy theories, and accusing opponents of being “deep state” traitors, they weaken a society’s capacities to protect itself from all sorts of threats.

They undermine the public good, which is the wellspring of a society’s true strength.

Netanyahu, Trump, and Putin have imperiled each of their nations by filling them with lies, paranoia, and distrust.