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Further Thoughts on Projection and the Truth |
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By Roger Kimball |
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Commentary The palm for the funniest post on X, formerly Twitter, this weekend goes to former national security adviser John Bolton. “There are,” he wrote, “clear dangers to a second term for Donald Trump.” Like what, John? “For one, he has made it known he will seek retribution against his political enemies using agencies like the Justice Department. It's certain Trump has plans to repeatedly cross lines that will cause conflict, often constitutional conflict.” Imagine, a president of the United States weaponizing “agencies like the Justice Department” to harass his political opponents! Whoever heard of such a thing? Well, there are the 1,200 or so people who have been targeted by the DOJ for hanging around the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And, believe it or not, the DOJ is planning to charge “thousands” more for “parading,” “obstructing an official proceeding,” etc. Do you remember the name Enrique Tarrio? He wasn’t even in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, but that didn’t matter. He was a leader of the “Western chauvinist” group The Proud Boys. So not only was he swept up by the FBI but he was given a 22-year prison sentence, the longest of anyone so far who had been on that kinetic sightseeing trip to the Capitol. Meanwhile, Ray Epps, the chap who was there on Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, shouting that people had to go “into the Capitol, into the Capitol,” was recently given a year’s probation. “He received no jail time,” the Associated Press reported, “and there were no restrictions placed on his travel during his probation.” John Bolton’s contention is a sterling example of the dominant psychological and rhetorical strategy on view in the Deep State’s war on liberty in America. The name that Freudians gave to the procedure is “projection.” I offered a brief primer in February 2022 in The Epoch Times, in a column called Projection for Beginners. At its core, projection involves attributing to others attitudes or behaviors that one entertains or engages in oneself. For example, a bully blames his victims for being overbearing and peremptory. Item: At the end of October 2016, Hillary Clinton, the super-double-world-class projector-in-chief, wrote in a tweet that “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.” Russia, eh? Computers, ah? As in: What do you mean by “wipe a computer server?” “Like with a cloth or something?” If you’re a psychologist, most examples of projection are un- or semi-conscious. In the realm of politics, which means in the realm of political warfare, there's also a large current of obvious mendacity at work. One of the biggest, if not the biggest, issues in the 2024 presidential election is the southern border, by which I mean the lack of a southern border. |
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In the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, it was the No. 1 concern. And, of course, for the poor states abutting the line that technically divides the United States from Mexico, concern about the flood of illegal immigrants coming is a white-hot existential concern. Who is to blame for this situation? According to President Joe Biden, Donald Trump is. Just last week, someone explained to the president that people didn’t like the fact that millions of non-citizens were being welcomed with open arms and were, moreover, being showered with all sorts of goodies paid for by U.S. taxpayers. In response, President Biden suddenly said, yes, the open border is a problem but, “The only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump.” The numbers don't exactly support the president’s claim. In 2023, there were 2,476,000 illegal border crossing encounters; in 2022, there were 2,379,000; in 2021, there were 1,735,000. In 2020, the last year of Donald Trump’s administration, there were 400,000. If you think those numbers are a problem for the Biden administration, you underestimate the extent to which the public can be acclimatized to lies. As another Important Person noted, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” There was a caveat to this declaration, however. Success depends not only on the size of the lie or the frequency with which it is repeated. In the realm of mendacity, repetition, to succeed, also requires repression. “The lie can be maintained,” that astute rhetor observed, “only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.” How long will the United States coast free from the “political, economic and/or military consequences” of the untrammeled illegal immigration it has been subject to? The jury is out on the timetable. But there's an increasing consensus about the dismal long-term effects. The people are waking up to that reality, to the fact that millions of illegal immigrants translates into millions of new leeches on the economy, millions of people set to displace American workers for scarce jobs, millions of people who, having been bribed with government largess, are set to fill the polling places with new Democrat voters. That same authority I have been quoting, one J. Goebbels (1897–1945), understood with penetrating clarity what had to happen if the lie was to prevail. “It thus becomes vitally important,” he wrote, “for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” The Gospel of St. John assures us that “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” It’s a syllogism-like process that assumes a conditional if–then statement. If you know the truth, then the truth will set you free. Our masters in Washington know this. Hence their adoption of the apparatus of repression, just as that other Joe said they should do. |
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