Ivy League
In my junior year of high school, I decided that I wanted to go to an Ivy League* school. I was intent on becoming a lawyer and run for political office. My political heroes, the Kennedys above all, went to Harvard, and almost everyone in power in both parties had Ivy connections. (Bobby Kennedy, the Dad not the current son, went to University of Virginia Law School, a fine institution. But he was a Harvard undergrad).
It was a long shot. My grades in high school were “OK”, but not “Ivy”. But I did have a “gift” for test taking, and back in the early 1970’s the tests (SAT, ACT, the “subject tests” called the ACH’s now SAT II’s) weighed heavily in admission decisions. Those scores were good. And I had a lot of the other stuff Ivy’s weighed; academic teams, sports, Scouts, political involvement and such.
I applied and interviewed at Dartmouth and Harvard. I also applied to a “Little Ivy”, Williams. And, to be realistic, I applied to Washington University in St Louis, and Denison and Miami here in Ohio.
Oh Denison!!
In December of my senior year, the guidance counselor called me out of class. She told me that Harvard just called, and I was in. For about twenty-four hours I was walking in the clouds. Then the next afternoon, the cruel-thin envelope with the crimson emboss arrived in the mailbox. Harvard thanked me for my interest, but politely declined.
It took a minute, or maybe a week. Dartmouth was out, and Williams put me on the waiting list. By January we (Mom and Dad did have a say) decided that Denison, here in Ohio, was my best fit. So in the fall off I went to Granville. It was a great school, a great place for me. They taught me politics from the left and the right, and let me study in Washington DC and even credited me for a semester of working on a Presidential campaign. And, as an aside, I earned an Ohio Teaching License, opening the option for a whole different career. I have no regrets.
the Formula
But I did learn that, at least academically, only the most successful, the highest grades, the most brilliant students went to the Ivy League universities.
So it amazes me when I look at those politicians and political influencers with Ivy League credentials who have bought into the Trump “Big Lie”. It’s not that “real” conservatives aren’t “smart”. The most brilliant professor I had at Denison was a true conservative, who went on to work in the Reagan Administration. But to espouse the “Big Lie” of election fraud? It’s hard to understand.
It is a simple formula. The Republican Party, led by Donald Trump, has spent nine years saying that the election process in the United States is corrupt. Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, many Republicans, Independents and even a few-odd Democrats think that’s true. Their conclusion is based on the “smoke and fire” principle. The GOP and Trump have created so much smoke, there must be some fire somewhere.
Truth be Damned
It’s not true. There really isn’t a fire at all. Sixty court cases after the 2020 election failed. Republican officials running elections in contested states know – for a fact – that there was no widespread voter fraud (ask Ohio’s Secretary of State Frank LaRose, before he was running for Senate, or the “Cyber-Ninjas” in Arizona). But Trump and other Republicans go the next step. Republicans justify all sorts of repressive voting laws, and Trump’s own clearly criminal attempt to overturn the 2020 election, on “corrupt elections”. The twice-impeached, now thrice-indicted former President’s defense is that “…he believed the elections were corrupt”. But instead of actually proving those elections were falsified, they simply say, “…Republicans believe that the elections are corrupt, so we need to fix them”.
It’s an old trick – the BIG LIE. If a lie is told over and over and over again, eventually it will sound like the truth. Please be sure, it’s not true, and constant repetition doesn’t become truth. A lie is a lie is a lie. But if a significant part of the citizenry believes the lie, then that becomes a justification to “fix what ain’t broke”. It also justifies all sorts of other illegal acts and lies.
And the big difference in our current era is that our “main source of information”, social media, makes their biggest profit by creating controversy and division. So we have one political party’s leadership repeating a lie, and the echo chamber of social media amplifying it a million-fold. It’s not just “smoke and fire”, it’s impenetrable smoke, choking smoke; smoke that all common-sense says must have a “fire source” somewhere. But it doesn’t.
Geometry
A ”corollary” to the BIG LIE is that the “Biden Administration” is “persecuting” Donald Trump. It’s simple political geometry: if you believe the elections are “rigged”, then opposing those elections and denying the results are “good”. Anyone prosecuting “good” people for that belief must be bad. Therefore, the Biden Administration (who really lost anyway) is persecuting Trump.
If you don’t accept the starting premise, the “Big Lie”, then the rest of the action falls apart. And from a FACTUAL standpoint, there is no factual basis to the “Big Lie” of election fraud. So you’d think all of the Ivy Leaguers, leading the charge for Trump, would know better. But Hawley (Yale), Cruz (Harvard), Bannon (Harvard), DeSantis (Harvard), and even Trump himself (Penn) are “all-in” for election fraud.
And they are bringing all of that intellectual prowess to bear. They are using their Lie to change America.
*The Ivy League consists of: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Yale.
