Thursday
According to polls, over half of all Republicans think that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election and that Donald Trump should actually be in the White House. As a number of commentators have pointed out, this is chiefly due to a steady stream of lies by the rightwing media—not only about this election but about fraudulent voter fraud charges going back years. Many of those who believe the “big lie” are good people so it’s painful to watch their delusion.
I am reminded of the much-abused Fantine in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. The mother of Cosette has undergone one abuse after another, including being bled dry by the execrable Thenardiers, who mistreat her daughter while claiming to care for her. Fantine has found work at the factory of the benevolent mayor of Montfermeil, who claims to be Monsieur Madeleine but is actually Jean Valjean, a wanted man. When words gets out about Fantine’s illegitimate daughter, she is fired but without Jean Valjean’s knowledge. Nevertheless, she holds him responsible for her downward spiral.
Here’s where I’m going with this. It’s possible to regard, as a monster, someone who actually wants to make your life better. If you live with a misunderstanding—or in the case of Trump supporters, with a lie—you may find yourself spitting on a man who is concerned about your well-being. That’s what happens when Fantine meets the mayor.
Everything has come to a head after Fantine, having struck a callous gentleman for playing an ugly prank on her, finds herself facing prison time. Madeleine, however, hears about her case and comes to her rescue. This doesn’t match up with the reality Fantine knows, however, and she commits another infraction:
At the instant when the soldiers laid their hands upon the unfortunate woman, who would not rise, he emerged from the shadow, and said:—
“One moment, if you please.”
Javert raised his eyes and recognized M. Madeleine. He removed his hat, and, saluting him with a sort of aggrieved awkwardness:—
“Excuse me, Mr. Mayor—”
The words “Mr. Mayor” produced a curious effect upon Fantine. She rose to her feet with one bound, like a spectre springing from the earth, thrust aside the soldiers with both arms, walked straight up to M. Madeleine before any one could prevent her, and gazing intently at him, with a bewildered air, she cried:—
“Ah! so it is you who are M. le Maire!”
Then she burst into a laugh, and spit in his face.
The saintly Jean Valjean, understanding her desperation, astounds her with his reaction:
M. Madeleine wiped his face, and said:—
“Inspector Javert, set this woman at liberty.”
Javert’s job, as he sees it, is to maintain hierarchy and keep the lower classes in their place. Nevertheless, Fantine can’t process what she has heard and strives for another explanation for the freedom she has just been granted:
“At liberty! I am to be allowed to go! I am not to go to prison for six months! Who said that? It is not possible that anyone could have said that. I did not hear aright. It cannot have been that monster of a mayor! Was it you, my good Monsieur Javert, who said that I was to be set free? Oh, see here! I will tell you about it, and you will let me go. That monster of a mayor, that old blackguard of a mayor, is the cause of all. Just imagine, Monsieur Javert, he turned me out! all because of a pack of rascally women, who gossip in the workroom. If that is not a horror, what is? To dismiss a poor girl who is doing her work honestly!
And then, further on:
O Monsieur Javert! it was you who gave orders that I am to be set free, was it not?
When Madeleine, having now heard her story, steps forward with the intention of helping her with her rent. Fantine still can’t recognize the situation for what it is:
He said to Fantine, “How much did you say that you owed?”
Fantine, who was looking at Javert only, turned towards him:—
“Was I speaking to you?”
Then, addressing the soldiers:—
“Say, you fellows, did you see how I spit in his face? Ah! you old wretch of a mayor, you came here to frighten me, but I’m not afraid of you. I am afraid of Monsieur Javert.”
Javert isn’t about to let her go but is overruled by Jean Valjean. Fantine, not surprisingly, experiences a moment of cognitive dissonance:
She had just seen herself a subject of dispute between two opposing powers. She had seen two men who held in their hands her liberty, her life, her soul, her child, in combat before her very eyes; one of these men was drawing her towards darkness, the other was leading her back towards the light. In this conflict, viewed through the exaggerations of terror, these two men had appeared to her like two giants; the one spoke like her demon, the other like her good angel. The angel had conquered the demon, and, strange to say, that which made her shudder from head to foot was the fact that this angel, this liberator, was the very man whom she abhorred, that mayor whom she had so long regarded as the author of all her woes, that Madeleine! And at the very moment when she had insulted him in so hideous a fashion, he had saved her! Had she, then, been mistaken? Must she change her whole soul? She did not know; she trembled. She listened in bewilderment, she looked on in affright, and at every word uttered by M. Madeleine she felt the frightful shades of hatred crumble and melt within her, and something warm and ineffable, indescribable, which was both joy, confidence and love, dawn in her heart.
So here’s the question facing America. Will Trump supporters, after all they’ve heard, continue to regard Joe Biden as a demon leading them into socialist darkness? Will they still think this after he gets America vaccinated and back to work? Will they still think this if he manages to sign an infrastructure bill that aids red states no less than blue states? Will they still think this is he’s able to deliver on his promise of subsidized child care and college education? Or will the frightful shades of hatred crumble and melt within them, replaced by something warm and ineffable?
Biden has told America what he would like to accomplish. Here’s Madeleine’s promise:
I have heard you. I knew nothing about what you have mentioned. I believe that it is true, and I feel that it is true. I was even ignorant of the fact that you had left my shop. Why did you not apply to me? But here; I will pay your debts, I will send for your child, or you shall go to her. You shall live here, in Paris, or where you please. I undertake the care of your child and yourself. You shall not work any longer if you do not like. I will give all the money you require. You shall be honest and happy once more. And listen! I declare to you that if all is as you say,—and I do not doubt it,—you have never ceased to be virtuous and holy in the sight of God. Oh! poor woman.
The GOP hopes to ride the big lie to electoral victory. Biden hopes to break through to Trump supporters by helping them. How the story ends is up in the air.
