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Friday
In a move that MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace compared to an arsonist returning to the scene of the crime, Donald Trump yesterday journeyed to Washington to address GOP Congress members for the first time since January 6. On that day, many of those now applauding Trump had cowered behind barricaded doors after he sent his supporters rampaging through the Capitol. As Wallace noted, while arsonists may enjoy revisiting their handiwork, normally the victims don’t themselves decide to celebrate the man who set their house on fire.
The GOP’s 180-degree turn—from condemning the attack to supporting Trump as he calls the insurrectionists “warriors” and promises to pardon them—recalls Winston Smith’s turnaround at the end of 1984. It’s always worth revisiting that passage because it reveals the lengths to which people will go to sell out their honor, integrity, dignity and core principles.
After relentless pressure from Big Brother, Winston finally surrenders, and his reward is a profound sense of relief. Orwell invokes Stalin’s notorious show trials, some of which ended with his victims embracing their own deaths, as he writes that Winston
was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain.
Trump has provided GOP lawmakers with absolution for their previous sin of doubting him (although he will needle them about it from time to time), and for this they are profoundly grateful. The more they fought him, the more his current forgiveness feels like a gift. Whether we call this cult behavior or Stockholm Syndrome or brainwashing, we are witnessing it daily. The novel concludes with Winston drinking gin in a café and gazing up adoringly at Big Brother’s enormous face:
Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
Winston at least has an excuse: either he embraces his authoritarian leader or rats chew off his face. What excuse for Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Nancy Mace, Mitch McConnell, and all those others who were at the Capitol that day?