The 2024 presidential election is proving to be a unique moment in American history.
You would think it’s unique because for the first since the 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951 a former president is seeking a non-consecutive term, and that for the first time that former president is a convicted felon.
Under normal circumstances, that would qualify as an utterly unique moment for our country, but that is not actually why it is.
Instead, what makes this year so unique is that for the first time in our history one of the two major political parties is suffering from an acute case of the psychological defense mechanism called projection.
It’s a condition wherein you attribute something negative and/or critical about someone else that you unconsciously feel is true about yourself.
In other words, every criticism Republicans are making against President Biden and the Democrats is exactly and precisely what they are doing, have done, or want to do themselves.
And they are at it big time.
Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton says Donald Trump is an innocent man who didn’t do anything wrong and that the Justice Department is prosecuting Democratic Senator Robert Menendez and Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas because they criticized President Biden’s foreign relations and immigration policy.
Republican Senator Mike Lee says he will try to get other Republicans to join him in shutting down the government because of the terrible thing a New York jury did to Trump by finding him guilty of 34 separate counts of fraud.
Marco Rubio, the Republican Senator from Florida, described the Trump verdict as “a complete travesty that makes a mockery of our system of justice.”
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said our justice system “hunts Republicans while protecting Democrats”
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Trump’s convictions were “a shameful day in American history,” adding, “This was a purely political exercise, not a legal one.” He also said he was sure the Supreme Court justices who are friends of his will overturn Trump’s conviction.
New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, called Trump’s convictions a sign of “a corrupt and rigged” justice system.
Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Green says we’re living in a banana Republic, as did Fix News host Laura Ingram, both in defense of Donald Trump as an innocent man.
Now put those comments alongside these facts.
Trump’s Attorney General, Bill Barr, pre-empted the release of the Mueller Report detailing how the Trump campaign colluding with the Russians in the 2016 election with the false public statement that it exonerated Trump, forcing Mueller to hold a news conference denying that the report said any such thing.
Bill Barr also appointed Special Counsel John Durham to investigate the investigators of the Trump campaign’s complicity with the Russian interference in the 2016 election that continued into the Biden presidency, but ended in a complete bust.
Trump fired his Attorney General Jeff Sessions for appointing Robert Mueller in the first place.
After losing the election, Trump tried to remove then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and install low level justice department attorney Jeff Clark who told Trump he was willing to use his position as acting Attorney General to help him overturn the 2016 election results.
On top of all of those past actions, Trump himself keeps talking about seeking revenge on his political opponents if he is elected again by getting the Justice Department to prosecute them.
There seems to be no limit to Republicans defending Donald Trump by accusing Joe Biden of everything Trump did, tried to do, or says he will do if given a chance.
What we seeing is a case of projection on steroids.
But, of course, this is an unconscious psychological defense mechanism that prevents the person from seeing what he or she is doing. Collectively, then, Republicans don’t see what they’re doing and, thus, will never admit they have a problem.
If what they’re doing wasn’t so dangerous, you’d almost feel sorry for them.
They’ve got to be a miserable group of people, what with supporting a whiny baby like Trump who complains about how persecuted he is, how unfair he is being treated, and why he will be justified in exacting revenge on his enemies.
It all adds up to the fact that there’s simply no chance Republicans will see the damage they are doing and stop. They’ll they bring down the whole system before that happens.
But there’s a better alternative.
They can be so resoundingly defeated in November that it won’t matter whether they change or not.
Maybe that won’t happen. Perhaps a majority of Americans are suffering from an epidemic of the logical fallacies I mentioned last time and will put Trump back in the White House.
But my experience as a pastor and a teacher tells me that while most people have sympathy for someone who suffers from psychological and/or emotional problems, they don’t like it when they act like children, constantly complain about how bad they’re being treated, or blame someone else for their failures.
So I have a hard time believing that since we’ve been there and done that already, they will want to suffer through another four years of the same stuff, especially since this time around it will be so much worse.
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