Some people you might consider experts believe we’re witnessing the beginning of the end of American democracy, with the leading Republican candidate for president openly talking about authoritarian actions he would take if he returns to the White House, and America shrinking from the task of protecting democracy in Europe.
How did it come to this? Well, there’s no simple answer – there are many causes of this crisis.
You might blame the unlimited flow of money into campaigns, which has fueled ugly media ad wars and skewed policies away from the interests of ordinary citizens.
You could cite the 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, which spawned right-wing talk radio and the pox of Fox News.
Or you could consider the anti-government rhetoric of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and the undermining of political norms in Congress in the 1990s – that came as Newt Gingrich rose to leadership of House Republicans.
Or blame the internet, since advancing technology is always a good villain.
But I’d say we’re suffering from something more fundamental – a lost value in American politics. And that is the core expectation among voters that we are being told the truth. We are awash in lies from people who lead us, and it has decayed respect for our democratic institutions. (1:12)
You might choose any number of incidents from our last half century as the point where lying emerged as an accepted political strategy. But let me point you to Henry Kissinger, who died recently at age 100 – a man who made lying the official policy of the United States government.
Kissinger, for you who are too young to recall, was national security adviser and then secretary of state under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and for almost a half-century after that, he was a genuine elder statesman, his views weighed and his presence welcomed in corridors of power globally.
But let’s briefly recall the secret bombing of Cambodia that Kissinger instigated shortly after Nixon took office in 1969, with a promise to end the war in Vietnam. Brutal attacks from the air on a nominally neutral and impoverished nation were such a breach of American values that even top military commanders, both in Asia and in the Pentagon, were kept in the dark.
Here’s what happened: At the White House’s insistence, American B52s were diverted from missions over South Vietnam to attack Cambodia, where Nixon and Kissinger were convinced supply routes were supporting America’s Vietnamese enemies. An elaborate scheme of fake documentation was set up to keep the bombing hidden from most of the Pentagon and all of the American people. This went on for four years. America dropped a half-million tons of bombs that obliterated one-fifth of Cambodia and killed at least 150,000 people. Whole rural villages were wiped out in a flash. The missions gave rise to the term “carpet bombing.” (2:44)
Is it any wonder, then, that America scolding Israel for its assault on Gaza has less moral force than you might imagine?
The awful impact on the ground in Cambodia was revealed bravely, and most tellingly, by the late journalist Sydney Schanberg, whose story became the basis for the movie “The Killing Fields.” Schanberg and other experts on the events of those days always insisted that the bombing failed in its strategic intent to stop communism, and in fact speeded the rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime.
Some historians consider the Cambodia bombing to be the first step in the abuse of presidential power that led to the Watergate scandal, the move to impeach the president, and then his resignation and pardon by his successor.
Those cataclysmic events echo today in the bitter partisan dramas surrounding the actions of another ex-president, one who was impeached twice, indicted four times and yet has a good chance of being returned to office. Lies actually undergird the political strength of Donald Trump. Of course, the politicians who support Trump know he is lying – here’s looking at you, Elise Stefanik – but they tolerate it because it furthers their political goals. How does that serve democracy?
Of course, politicians throughout history have distorted reality in pursuit of success. There’s even a philosophical basis for it, offered by no less a figure than Plato, who asserted in The Republic that “rulers of the state… may be allowed to lie for the public good.” Plato was no fan of democracy – specifically because he saw it as more vulnerable to being undermined by untruth than a monarchy would be.
But the lies that have become commonplace in America are not intended to promote the “public good” – Plato’s standard; they’re aimed at protecting the political progress of candidates or their party. No public good is coming from the virus of deceit that has infected our body politic.
Lies rob voters of the raw material they need to make rational choices at the polls. As James Madison, the so-called Father of the Constitution put it, “A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
The lies that deny voters that knowledge are undermining the political culture of America. We are accomplices to the demise of democracy if we tolerate those who mislead us for their own ends.
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.