As part of their apparent mission to be the dumbest congressional majority in history, last week House Republicans introduced bills to "expunge" Donald Trump's two impeachments. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., brought forward two resolutions claiming that, as if by magic, they can make it "as if such articles had never been passed." Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is fully on board with these efforts even though, as Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post wrote, "expunging a presidential impeachment is not a thing."
"Gaslighting" is an overused term, but this is an iconic example of it: Telling people that what they witnessed with their eyes never happened, their authentic memories are delusions and that the delusions of the gaslighter are reality. It's one of Trump's favorite tricks, as evidenced by his first action as president: denying the photographic evidence showing the paltry turnout at his inauguration.
This bit of silliness is getting covered in the mainstream media, but only with a few perfunctory "Republicans are weird" stories before the punditry moves on to more "serious" issues. The assumption is that this is yet another example of the House GOP's devotion to soothing Trump's endlessly hurt feelings, a job so immense it requires the round-the-clock efforts of 222 Republican members of Congress.
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But while their Trump ass-kissing duties are a major impetus for this move, it's far from the only one. This effort to rewrite recent history must be understood in the light of the larger Republican effort to rewrite all American history, with an eye toward denying the demonstrable damage that white nationalism and other right-wing ideologies have wrought. There's a direct line between banning books because they tell the truth about slavery and Jim Crow to this current effort to supplant the truth about Trump's crimes with GOP fantasies.
The language in the bills about "guilt" and "distress" speaks volumes about the motivations of Republican book banners. They feel bad when reminded of these historical atrocities because they fear, for good reason, that they would have been on the wrong side of that debate if they were alive then. They want to banish the truth about Trump's extensive crimes for the same reason.
One common thread tying all of these strands together is the authoritarian insistence that their feelings should determine what is true, even if all empirical evidence cuts against what they wish to believe. This "right-wing feelings over facts" mentality is written directly into the recently passed state laws that have ushered in the new era of book banning. In Florida, the law signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis forbids schools to have any text that might cause "discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress." Similar language is used in many of the hundreds of book banning bills being introduced by Republicans in dozens of state legislatures.
These laws were written to protect the delicate minds of right-wingers, and are almost exclusively being interpreted as a tool to erase the realities of racism, homophobia, and misogyny from being taught in classes or portrayed in books. A recent Popular Infomation report on banned social studies textbooks in Florida shows how this works. One book publisher was told they were violating the new law for acknowledging the basic truth that being enslaved is a terrible experience.
Another textbook was rejected for acknowledging that Roe v. Wade ever happened, even though the language was oblique.
"Expunging" Trump's impeachments is just an expansion of this increasingly authoritarian view held by Republicans that reality must bend to their feelings. Indeed, the most famous example of this is Trump's Big Lie itself. Recent CNN polling shows that 63% of Republican or Republican-leaning voters refuse to admit that President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election. Interestingly, only 33% of GOP voters insist there's "solid evidence" of the Big Lie. (There's not, as it's a lie, a big one.) That disparity demonstrates that on some level, even many hardline authoritarians know that they're rejecting facts in favor of their fantasies. They want to believe Trump won, and so will insist on it no matter what.
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As Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube explained in a recent video, "The most important thing to realize about conspiracy theories is they try to express something emotionally rather than say anything about how the world is." This, she added, is "why believers are seemingly immune to evidence." Flat Earthers, she points out, often respond with defensive prayers to shut out evidence that the earth is round.
In the authoritarian mind, feelings should supplant facts. The winner of the election should be who they wish it was, not who actually won. They wish to believe that slavery was not a big deal, and so they banish any book that tells the truth. Now they wish to believe that Trump was never impeached, and so they are insisting on some kind of law that will declare their delusions to be truth.
There's a direct line between banning books because they tell the truth about slavery and Jim Crow to this current effort to supplant the truth about Trump's crimes with GOP fantasies.
Of course, in doing so, Republicans are unwittingly exposing their guilty consciences. If, as they claim, the impeachment charges were simply nonsense concocted for political reasons, they would have the confidence of mind to simply let the past be past. (See how Democrats aren't particularly fussed by talking about Bill Clinton's pointless impeachment, for example.) Dredging all this up, especially in the face of many more Trump crimes being currently litigated in the courts, is a classic example of protesting too much. After all, Trump was acquitted by Senate Republicans. The fact that this isn't good enough for Republicans shows they are still bothered by the overwhelming evidence of Trump's guilt.
Their over-the-top defensiveness is evident in all the various ways that Republicans exhaust themselves these days trying to deny obvious facts. It takes a lot of energy to erase the realities of slavery or Jim Crow from textbooks. Most people don't even see the point. But the language in the bills about "guilt" and "distress" speaks volumes about the motivations of Republican book banners. They feel bad when reminded of these historical atrocities because they fear, for good reason, that they would have been on the wrong side of that debate if they were alive then. They want to banish the truth about Trump's extensive crimes for the same reason. It's hard to keep supporting Trump while pretending to be a good person. So instead they lie and deny and insist their feelings should eclipse the facts that show their leader to be the unrepentant monster he is.
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