7 Stopping the Steal

Speaking of bullshit, as  Attorney General Barr at the time accurately labeled it, the claim of 2020 Stolen Election is front and center.  It is still around in 2025, the total disregard for truth claim that the 2020 Election Stolen, now even required to be taught in Oklahoma Schools, and a Government Website laying claim to the same bullshit.

Total Disregard for Truth Starts with  Claims of 2020 Stolen Election

John Eastman,  a law professor at Chapman University and a visiting scholar at the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado Boulder, is one of the main sources.  As Field (2025, p. 147) points out, Eastman is also the “founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a senior fellow at the institute, and a member of its board of directors … also chairman of the board of the National Organization of Marriage (NOM, a lobby group dedicated to fighting same-sex marriage that was chaired for a time by Princeton’s Robert P. George) and a prominent member of the Federalist Society.” Credentials abound.  Total disregard for truth is the Eastman way.

At 11 o-clock on January 6, 2021, “Rudy Giuliani spoke to the “’Save America’ rallygoers. John Eastman stood by his side (Field 2025, p. 147).” The election had been stolen, Giuliani and Eastman proclaimed. And, it eventually got framed as “the New Lost Cause, like the old one, [sought] to convert a shameful catastrophe into a celebration of the valor and honor of the culprits and portray those who attacked the country as the true patriots (Field 2025, p. 150, quoting a writer David A Graham).” Yes, it did, and it was  all framed with a total disregard for the truth, again characterized for what it is in On Bullshit (Frankfurt 2005).

On Bullshit in Full View

Field goes through all the details of how the New Right worked to claim the 2020 Election Stolen.   And, Eastman played the key role, with supposed credentials.  Yet, as Field (2025, p. 156 says it): “A person does not need a law degree or a PhD in political science to see that John Eastman’s (claims) did not amount to ordinary, professional legal counsel… (it was all about claims of) widespread fraud and illegality in the 2020 election as premises—claims that had no merit.”  It was about a total disregard for the truth for the purpose of actually stealing the election.  Facts were of no accord to Eastman, and to the others associated with Claremont Institute who pushed the fabrication of 2020 Election Stolen by the Democrats.

It is a Charles Kesler, a Claremont Institute “scholar” that gets the most attention here, as in backing up Eastman.  Conspiracy theories are supported, as in the Democrats somehow actually orchestrated a steal of the 2020 Election. 

Kesler is also into full, unapologetic support of Trump and loyalists.  Kesler is an ideologue willing to go full in on disregard for the truth. Yet, even Kesler finally gave a bit of ground to the fact, as Kesler  “…eventually conceded that ‘there is persuasive evidence of a more normal sort’ that Trump simply lost the election  … quietly conceded the only thing that has ever really mattered: ‘In any event, none of the state legislatures in question had actually filed a formal request to withdraw and reexamine their state’s electoral votes.’ In other words, the whole thing—the entire justificatory schema that played an obvious role in the violence that unfolded on January 6—was bogus from the start (Field 2025, p. 160).” Yes, it was.

One of the most bizarre,  unfounded claims by Kesler as “scholar” is the claim of “… two main ways of understanding constitutionalism in America: the Founders’ Constitution (the good one), and the Progressive Constitution (catastrophic). Kesler argued that the latter had all but replaced the original, which meant that America was close to wrecked (Field 2025, pp. 162-163).” So anything goes to “save” the Constitution and the America built on it, including total disregard for the truth (again, Bullshit, as Harry Frankfurt correctly characterizes it), noble lies, and using propaganda techniques in flood the zone tactics: repeat, repeat, repeat until the now brainwashed go along.

One of the most disturbing points by Field is to an essay written by Sohrab Ahmari on the anniversary of January 6 in 2022 … in  The New York Times with the heading, “Jan. 6 Looks Different Through the Lens of ‘American Carnage,’ ” in which he called the event the “cornpone intifada” and argued that it was the result of populist economic disappointment with Trump. Patrick Deneen and Gladden Pappin each tweeted out Ahmari’s article. Deneen called it “a superb essay … challenging the lazy understanding of 1/6. Trump wasn’t radical enough, and the events of a year ago were a manifestation of his failure to advance a genuinely populist revolution.” It would not be the last time Deneen invoked the language of revolution… (Field 2025, pp. 164-165). 

America Long Overdue for Serious Economic Innovation and Reform

And, a DIT framed analysis would lend support to the observation by Field (2025, p. 165):  “I tend to agree with Postliberals like Ahmari, Deneen, and Pappin—as well as with many liberals and progressives—that America is long overdue for serious economic innovation and reform, and I have appreciated some of their ideas about how to make it happen. That said, it was tendentious to see January 6 as the result of worker dissatisfaction rather than the outcome of an elite-manufactured ‘stolen election’ story hyped enthusiastically by the sitting president, and levied ferociously across right-wing media, including by many New Right intellectuals, as well as by the Christian right…”   Yes, tendentious, indeed.  As an academic using DIT, it is extremely disappointing to see a fellow academic like Patrick Deneen, who has demonstrated substantive credentials, go into conspiracy-land to justify the claim that January 6, 2021, was just some kind of legitimate political rally to nudge a President toward being more populist.  Seriously?

An academic with the stature of Deneen should know better.  It is disturbing that Deneen apparently does not acknowledge the January 6  event for it was:  An attempt to take down an institution of the Democracy based on the total disregard for the truth and outright lies --- Big Lie 2020 Election Stolen, with brainwashing techniques used to spread it --- in the face of acknowledged facts that the 2020 Election was not stolen by the Left.

As Field (2025, p. 165) says it, in working to counter the claims that the George Floyd Matter, and that all the protests associated with it was on the same plane as the January 6 insurrection, it is “clear, there was never a parallel story of liberals and leftists hyping up a ‘Big Lie’ to get people into the streets after George Floyd’s murder; they went out—I went out—to protest a gross injustice. Whether you agree with the protestors or not, they were not trying to overturn a presidential election or risking a constitutional crisis based on a fraudulent lie.”  Yes, that is the fact.