As many of you know, I’m an avid reader. What a few may know is that I love to browse bookstores, particularly used bookstores. There is nothing so invigorating to a reader than to find a gem in such a place. A gem may be a famous book you have been seeking for a long time or one about one of your favourite subjects. Or a gem could be a book you have never heard of but looks interesting, so you buy it more for curiosity than expectation. I have a library of used books and they fall into all three of those categories. It is interesting where you can find used books. One of my more successful locations of late is Value Village. You go there to contribute stuff you no longer need and then wander in to see what you can find.
It was at such an occasion that I found what turned out to be a very interesting book called, “It was all a lie.” What makes it more intriguing is the position of the author. Stuart Stevens, an American, has been a Republican for most of his life. Not only that but he has been a communications specialist and campaign manager for dozens of Republicans running for office. And yet, this book is a scathing indictment of the Republican party over the past forty or fifty years. His premise is that Donald Trump was not an aberration, a one-off renegade who somehow slipped into the presidency, but a logical conclusion of what the Republican Party had become over those years. The author recounts the many things that the party has done and positions that it has taken over the years that have led to it becoming the radical right party it is today. It has become the party of the wealthy and of the white and of the fundamentalist Christians. The book then goes on to Mr. Trump, his background and road to the presidency.
Even although this book was written before the 2020 election, Mr. Stevens lays the groundwork for the election fraud campaign by pointing out that Mr. Trump, after his election in 2016, declared that there must have been voter fraud because he had not won the popular vote (Mrs. Clinton had won that by several million votes). The author also points out that the political polarization of the left and right had been building up for years before Mr. Trump came along and exacerbated it. The conclusion that Mr. Trump was the ideal candidate for that party became obvious. Mr. Stevens also points out that, from a demographic perspective, the Republican Party is losing ground. As more immigrants and people of colour become a larger part of the population and enter the political arena, the Republican party, in its current guise, is being overtaken and will become a losing party in the years ahead. This fact is used by Republicans at all levels of government to push through legislation aimed at disenfranchising as many of these groups as possible. Apparently, the 14th Amendment to their Constitution, the one guaranteeing the vote for all citizens, means nothing to them. This used to be the party of Abraham Lincoln.
The problem now is the legacy that Mr. Trump, fully supported by the Republican Party, has left behind. From the violence of last January 6th to the legislation on voter suppression mentioned above plus a conservative dominated Supreme Court apparently willing to overturn many of the more liberal laws of the country, the Republicans are trying to control the country. There are many commentators who now predict that violence and even civil war could occur in the United States either after the 2022 or 2024 election if the Republicans don’t win. A very bad state of affairs.
This is why this book, “It was all lies”, is so relevant in these times. It shows one of the ways that the US got that way. You never know what you can find with a bit of browsing.
