103 - An Epidemic of Deceit: Trump and Putin
Roman emperors probably prevaricated and medieval popes certainly had much to obfuscate and misrepresent. But almost every part of today’s globe wallows in deceit. Trump has poisoned planetary respect for simple truth and straightforwardness, and enabled persistent lying as far afield as South America and Asia. He is joined now in infamy by Putin uttering one falsehood after another. In both cases, that their false bromides are noticed, even burnished, by conspiracists and other opportunists only magnifies their mutual malevolent influence.
There is no minimizing the corrosive nature of Trump and Putin’s deceit. Their actions have enabled 299 candidates for U.S. federal, state, and local office in November’s mid-term election over and over to repeat the calumny that the 2020 election was “stolen,” and that President Biden was not fairly elected. That there are so many deniers running loose and campaigning for office inevitably erodes one of the oft-unstated but absolutely critical foundations of any democracy: a willingness to accept electoral defeat and a willingness to trust long-enduring methods of deciding winners and losers.
As Mayor Michael Bloomberg said from up-close knowledge in 2016, Trump is a “big con artist.” What that means is that bending and distorting truth is of no consequence. All that is important for ego-driven and profit-driven animals like Trump is the bottom line: “What’s in it for me?” Do I garner acclaim or chances to cash in by riling up the gullible and vulnerable crowds who are prepared to have their prejudices fanned wildly by someone as brazen as me? President Jair Bolsonaro copies Trump in Brazil and autocrats like President Viktor Orban in Hungary use similar techniques to lead their followers and their nations astray.
No one should doubt the salience of leadership by example, for good or ill. Democracy and the hallowed four freedoms are endangered everywhere by the baleful shadow that a defeated president like Trump still throws not only in our own country, but worldwide. If the United States stood as tall and morally righteous as it did under Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, George H. W. Bush, Barrack Obama, and others, the entire globe would be less dangerous and less adrift on a sea of dangerous deceit. And Putin’s mayhem would be less tolerated, even by China and India.
History will have to judge whether Putin lies less or more than Trump, and whether more innocent civilians have been harmed by the prevarications of the one or the other. Putin may have an edge, given the invasion of Ukraine and his seemingly unstoppable untruths about its purpose and progress, and who and why he says that his troops are attacking. Then there are the lies to the Russian nation and his attempt to justify losses on the battlefield by blaming NATO and the United States.
Putin’s false claims and false explanations only reinforce perceptions within and without Russia of his loss of legitimacy – a loss that no number of untrue arguments can arrest. As I wrote in this Newsletter on September 20 (97 –“Legitimacy is Fundamental to Keeping Power and Pursuing War”), losing legitimacy is much easier than winning it. A leader like Putin almost overnight can rapidly forfeit such legitimacy as he has accumulated over decades of deceitful but successfully strong performance. That has delivered some of resources that Russians craved, and kept the world from ignoring Russia. Such accomplishments contributed to his legitimacy both at home and worldwide. But now his place at the head of Russia is sustained only by coercion and intimidation.
Criticism from the right and left, and by popular cultural figures within Russia and by pro-war commentators and activists, is but one aspect of Putin’s plunging illegitimacy. Deceit, in other words, only obscures the truth so long as there are no serious challenges. But Ukraine, led by a president with growing and charismatic legitimacy in his own country and abroad, has steadfastly overcome Putin’s pretentious falsehoods. Putin’s preposterous war motives, soldiers with poor training, archaic equipment, and nugatory inspiration have all succumbed to Ukraine’s greater truths. Many Russian troops quickly realized that Putin’s invasion was a mirage of intent. Everything concerning the war was untrue, and so fighters looted, raped, and tried to run away.
Likewise, reinforcing Putin’s perceived illegitimacy, his call-up of 300,000 reservists led to the flight across nearby national borders of at least 300,000 potentially draftable recruits who, by then, knew that Putin’s war was Potemkin-like. It had degenerated from a “special operation” into a nakedly vain quest for one increasingly illegitimate ruler’s vanity. Why, as Secretary of State John Kerry once said about the Vietnam War when he was a returned veteran, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
It is not only at home in Russia, and in places like London, Washington, Berlin, and Brussels that Putin suffers from illegitimacy. Even in his near abroad – the former Soviet satellites of Central Asia -- Putin has become a pariah, especially compared to President Xi Jinping (no moral paragon himself) of China. The leaders of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan made it evident in face-to-face meetings last week that they would not recognize Putin’s forced annexation of parts of Ukraine and that they would continue to welcome its ambassadors. Moreover (and this was a serious blow), they kept Putin waiting in an annex for meetings well after the appointed hour. He fumed.
Some, even many, of the 299 American deniers may win office in November, and the legitimacy of American leadership in the world will decrease on the back of Trump’s blatant lies. We – and the stability of the world – will be by far the worse because there are no current Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smiths and Solicitor General Archibald Coxes to denounce the Republican descent into the slough of deceit. Will what is left of decency among Republicans ever come to our rescue?
Likewise, can we hope that some sensible Russian collection of generals removes Putin before he reaches for a nuclear weapon? It is conceivable, but unlikely in the short run that Ukraine will continue to advance on Russia, and emerge victorious in a way that is decisive and calamitous for
Putin. We cannot be optimistic when Putin has more missiles and more bombs, and perhaps more personnel, to perpetuate the war. But at least President Volodymyr Zelensky has so far demonstrated the power of integrity to motivate fighters. The war in Ukraine is both about good versus evil and, no less, a titanic struggle of truth-telling versus repeated falsifications.