Courtesy of Bastrop Advertiser
Oct. 14, 2021
By Bill McCann
Medical and pharmaceutical experts have been busy finding and naming new ailments, then developing drugs to treat them. But there is at least one ailment they haven’t officially named or found a treatment for yet. It’s a scary condition that causes people with extreme Republican views to experience selective memory loss. Until drugmakers dream up a better name, I call it “fauxnesia,” short for fake amnesia.
Fauxnesia especially spreads after U.S. voters elect a Democratic president. It is prevalent among congressional Republicans, particularly those eager to undermine Democrats to stay in power. To help you understand fauxnesia and its disastrous implications for our country, here are three examples:
Debt ceiling
The debt ceiling is the limit on the federal government’s ability to borrow money to pay its bills. Congress has raised the debt ceiling roughly 90 times over the past century during Democratic and Republican administrations, including three times under former President Donald Trump. Recently it became time to raise it again. But in a fit of political hackery, Senate Republicans decided to jerk Democratic President Joe Biden around. First, they stalled a vote to raise the limit. Then they approved a short-term measure, ensuring that they will continue their political gamesmanship, knowing that failure to raise the limit could bring default and economic recession.
Republicans developed fauxnesia. Forgetting they spent like drunken sailors during the Trump administration, they have tried to convince often-gullible voters they are fiscally conservative again. What they conveniently ignored was that the Trump administration incurred $7.8 trillion of the nation’s nearly $29 trillion debt, much of it related to tax cuts that largely benefitted rich people and big businesses. The government must raise the debt ceiling partly because Trump’s bills are coming due.
Afghanistan
Biden recently took considerable flak from Republicans over withdrawing U.S. troops and Afghan allies from Afghanistan. But, experiencing fauxnesia again, Republicans forgot that the Trump administration seriously hamstrung Biden in the deal it made with the Taliban in February 2020 for the U.S. to leave Afghanistan after two decades there. Trump, who falsely sold himself as an artful dealmaker, cut a deal that only the Taliban could love. And he made it without including the Afghan government. The deal helped lead to the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners. It also left Biden with limited leverage. If Biden backed out, it could have meant sending thousands of U.S. troops back to Afghanistan in a no-win war.
Coup attempt
On Jan. 6, a mob of Trump supporters, riled up by Trump and others who lied that he got cheated out of reelection, stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempted coup. It left several people dead, at least 140 police officers injured, and our democracy seriously shaken.
It didn’t take long for fauxnesia to occur. Some Trump Republicans called the criminal insurrectionists heroes and patriots. One congressional Republican called them tourists. Nearly 700 people have been arrested and charged with crimes so far. Anyone with half a brain who has seen the video footage knows these insurrectionists were neither tourists nor patriots.
Congressional Republicans, who forgot they spent tens of millions of dollars on hearings and investigations on empty charges against Hillary Clinton, refused to spend a penny to investigate the Jan. 6 attempted overthrow of our government and those behind it. Maybe it’s because some of them might be implicated.
Republicans, who like to wrap themselves in the flag, want to forget that real patriots don’t try to overthrow a legitimately elected government, even if they oppose it. Fauxnesia is contagious and poses a threat to our democracy’s health. I wish we had a vaccine for it, but Republicans probably would refuse to take it anyway.
McCann is a contributing columnist for the Advertiser. He is a retired journalist and may be reached at [email protected].
