Schwab: Give Person of Year to founders of our prevariocracy

You won’t find it in the dictionary — yet — but Trump and the GOP provide the illustration.

By Sid Schwab

Time magazine offered me “Person of the Year” before Trump, but they wanted me to say their editors invented “Foxolimjonesian” and “Foxification.” I declined.

When Trump makes a similar claim, and Time responds that nothing he said was remotely true, that’s serious. Unlike my fib, his lies are legion, and affect us all. Since the election, his untruths number more than 1,600. You can look it up. It’s beyond pathological. In a “leader,” it’s alarming. The only thing more so is people who deny it.

Retaining ownership of the above-noted appellations, I present my latest: Prevariocracy. Because they can’t win honestly with their donor-demanded, economically irresponsible, environmentally destructive, stockholder-enriching, poverty-punishing, no-growth fiscal agenda, Republican leaders created the prevariocracy to push their no-hearings, no-jobs corporate tax breaks. Among other untruths. Trump, his Cabinet, and his rapacious Congress aren’t draining the swamp. They are the swamp.

Faced with choosing between protecting the institutions on which America was founded — preserving democracy, in other words — and an agenda constructed expressly to foster and maintain oligarchy, they’ve chosen the latter. It’s a Mephistophelian bargain, at the expense of 95 percent of us, supporters included.

Erasing the boundaries between truth and falsehood is but the starting point for today’s Republican leaders. It underpins Trump’s nonstop attacks on non-Foxolimjonesian media, promoting the myth of “fake news” to defame reporters brave enough to expose their fictions. (The Washington Post just parried a Koch-funded O’Keefian scam aimed at discrediting reporting on Roy “Unqualified-even-without-predation” Moore. Trump has contributed 10 grand to O’Keefe.) Creating distrust of non-propagandist media, Trump feels free to lie about Russian connections and election interference (tinyurl.com/just-this1). And pretty much everything else.

Deliberate as an IED, Republicans are turning the electoral process into a weapon for retaining power, rather than the means by which we are empowered to influence our government. They’ve chosen to win by gerrymandering, and by promulgating the Orwellian falsehood of massive voter fraud to justify laws impeding access to polling places by Democratic-leaning citizens. In states Trump won by a whisper, it worked to the tune of hundreds of thousands of legal voters turned away.

Worse: Recognizing that people capable of thinking, having access to free-flowing information, are a threat to their deceptions, Republicans have been attacking public education for decades, creating a warehouse of pliable voters, ignorant of science, suspicious of expertise. From rewriting history textbooks to teaching mythology over science, cynically manipulating the faithful, whom they regard as fertile soil in which to plant their dishonesty (when will they see it?), their war on truth and the desire and ability to obtain it has been unrelenting.

And now they’re targeting access to the internet, where facts counter to their deceits are in abundance, for people immune to the plague of disinformation they’re spreading, aided by Russia. The FCC was inundated with as many as a million fake letters and emails demanding an end to net neutrality. Predictably, suspiciously, the Trump-appointed head of the FCC is refusing to cooperate with investigations. If they succeed in undermining fair access, it’ll hit poor people the hardest. Anyone surprised?

Simultaneously, almost unnoticed, right-wing media conglomerates like Sinclair metastasize across the land (they’re here), substituting Fox-like propaganda for news. Democracy depends on informed voters; these attacks on accurate information are multi-varied and disturbingly effective.

And they know maintaining this subversion requires larding federal courts with incompetent ideologues who’ll look the other way from attacks on voting, minority rights, women’s health, environmental protection, separation, consumer protection (a Trump appointee just did), and more. Since the American Bar Association has been evaluating judicial nominees, initiated by President Eisenhower in 1953, less than 1 percent of all nominees had been deemed not qualified. Until Trump’s. Of them, it’s 8 percent. (Trump told the ABA he’ll ignore their recommendations. He already has a swampful of choices.) The Republican Senate consented. To them, judicial qualification means willingness to legislate from the bench. Their way.

Realizing that legislating wealth accretion for themselves and their financiers requires destroying the indispensable components of a free society, Trump and Republicans are doing so, enthusiastically.

It can’t be overstated how dangerous this is. People who ignore it are facilitators; those who see and excuse it fatally misunderstand, or reject, the true source of American greatness. Trump retweets Nazi anti-Muslim videos. Fox spews state-sponsored agitprop. Congressional deconstruction is relentless.

“It can’t happen here?” It is. Right now.

Email Sid Schwab at columnsid@gmail.com.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Opinion

toon
Editorial cartoons for Sunday, Feb. 9

A sketchy look at the news of the day.… Continue reading

bar graph, pie chart and diagrams isolated on white, 3d illustration
Editorial: Don’t let state’s budget numbers intimidate you

With budget discussions starting soon, a new website explains the basics of state’s budget crisis.

A young man carries water past the destroyed buildings of a neighborhood in the Gaza Strip, Feb. 2, 2025. President Donald Trump’s proposal to “own” the Gaza Strip and transfer its population elsewhere has stirred condemnation and sarcasm, but it addresses a real and serious challenge: the future of Gaza as a secure, peaceful, even prosperous place. (Saher Alghorra/The New York Times)
Comment: ‘Homeland’ means exactly that to Gazans

Palestinians have long resisted resettlement. Trump’s plan to ‘clean out’ Gaza changes nothing.

Rent stabilization can keep more from losing homes

Thank you to The Herald Editorial Board for its editorial, regarding rent… Continue reading

Don’t pamper young criminals with lenient sentences

I want to give a shout out to Todd Welch for his… Continue reading

Comment: Democracy depends on support of local journalism

A state bill provides funding to support local news outlets through a modest tax on tech businesses.

Comment: Love is intoxicating; romance doesn’t have to be

Navigating sobriety while dating, with Valentine’s Day coming up, is possible and fulfilling.

Comment: State attempt at single-payer health care bound to fail

Other states have tried, but balked when confronted with the immense cost to state taxpayers.

Curtains act as doors for a handful of classrooms at Glenwood Elementary on Monday, Sept. 9, 2024 in Lake Stevens, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Editorial: Schools’ building needs point to election reform

Construction funding requests in Arlington and Lake Stevens show need for a change to bond elections.

FILE- In this Nov. 14, 2017, file photo Jaìme Ceja operates a forklift while loading boxes of Red Delicious apples on to a trailer during his shift in an orchard in Tieton, Wash. Cherry and apple growers in Washington state are worried their exports to China will be hurt by a trade war that escalated on Monday when that country raised import duties on a $3 billion list of products. (Shawn Gust/Yakima Herald-Republic via AP, File)
Editorial: Trade war would harm state’s consumers, jobs

Trump’s threat of tariffs to win non-trade concessions complicates talks, says a state trade advocate.

A press operator grabs a Herald newspaper to check over as the papers roll off the press in March 2022 in Everett. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald file photo)
Editorial: Push back news desert with journalism support

A bill in the state Senate would tax big tech to support a hiring fund for local news outlets.

Forum: Requiem for a lost heavyweight: Sports Illustrated

SI, with Time and NatGeo, were a holy trinity for me and my dad. Now, it’s a world of AI clickbait.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.