Opinion

Last night, the Senate Democrats finalized an agreement on a $740 billion piece of legislation that addresses climate change, corporate taxes, healthcare, drug prices and more. US Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona’s conservative Democrat, held out till the end. After some bargaining, she said last night that she’s ready to “move forward.”

The Inflation Reduction Act is only part of an agenda Joe Biden had outlined early in his administration. (The president had hoped for a couple of trillion dollars’ worth of new investments.) Headlines this morning, however, are treating it as if it were the whole shebang. CNN said it puts “Biden's agenda on the cusp of Senate approval.”

This week’s primaries helped show something: The January 6 hearings may well not end the Big Lie. The Big Lie is more than Trump now, and it is more than a revisionist project about the 2020 election.

The Big Lie is now part of the culture wars, and as such it has become more diffused through our politics, more capable of enduring in myriad ways across American life. Any and all elections can now be called into question—from school board to president. Thiel-backed Senate hopeful Blake Masters, addressing questions around his own peddling of election lies summed it up by saying, “I think there’s always cheating, probably, in every election.”

Donald Trump is a type of fascist terminator. He will not stop. He will not get tired. He is relentless in his pursuit of power and will do anything to get and keep it. And he is here right now.

He is not alone. Many of Trump's followers are willing to engage in acts of terrorism and other violence at his command. Others in Trump's orbit are using him as a weapon to advance their own agenda of creating a new American apartheid Christian fascist plutocracy. They have no use for Trump personally. Some of them will even acknowledge, in private, that he is very dangerous. But they have convinced themselves that Trump can be deployed to do their bidding. To this point, they have been proven correct.

There’s a video going around of Jon Stewart confronting a highly influential right-wing propagandist with millions of followers inside and outside the GOP, including supporters of the former president.

I don’t need to tell you his name. I don’t need to explain the context in depth or why they found each other face-to-face or even why the former host of “The Daily Show” was blue face vein-popping angry.

Until Wednesday, Infowars founder and host Alex Jones seemed unfazed about the possibility of consequences. For years, the right-wing fabulist has been in a court battle with the parents of the young children murdered in the Sandy Hook massacre. The surviving parents are suing Jones for false claims that the school shooting never happened. Most people facing a lawsuit from such sympathetic plaintiffs would respond by showing humility and remorse. Jones, however, has turned this situation into a clown show by refusing court orders to turn over evidence, not showing up for trial, and going on air regularly to tell even more defamatory lies about the families and the judge presiding over the case.

He has good reason to believe shamelessness will work out for him. Through the power of bullshit, Alex Jones has evaded consequences for his actions for decades. His strategy is simple: Lie to the audience by claiming to be the victim of a vast conspiracy. This opens a fountain of loyalty and, crucially, money.

I have been skeptical of those claiming that a backlash is brewing after the US Supreme Court struck down Roe. It’s not that I believe people aren’t mad about losing legal protection of their right to privacy and freedom. It’s that I believe in the wowzer power of the human mind to convince itself that terrible things aren’t so terrible.

Recent polling seemed to validate my skepticism. While some said people were more likely to see the coming midterms as a referendum on abortion rights, others said the economy was more important (inflation, the price of gas, food, etc.). Other polls suggested people had lost so much faith in democracy that they might not vote.