Outgoing Vice President Mike Pence gave an address to a rabid, maskless crowd (indoors in a hotel ballroom) at the Turning Point USA conference Tuesday, decrying Democrats and positing a false equivalence between “freedom” and “socialism” that demonstrates the dangers Trumpism holds for this nation and the problems the GOP will have in the future.

https://youtu.be/ev0dODE-Vrc

From beginning to end, this five-minute snippet exemplifies the structural and political fallacies that have propped up Trump, from an undying faithfulness to a failed politician to a series of fact-free and history-defying statements.

“Four more years!  Four more years!” and “Stop the steal! Stop the steal!”–-chants from the audience

From the outset, this video shows that neither Pence nor the attendees at TP-USA (as Pence refers to it) have any connection to reality or fealty to the United States Constitution.  Willfully ignoring the outcome of the (small-d) democratic election, the votes of the Electoral College and the rulings of state and federal Courts, the crowd screams to overturn the most recent election.

Pence, a public servant sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States, stands there soaking it in, unwilling to stop and correct the adoring crowd.  He, like Trump, is a wannabe emperor, unencumbered by mere laws.

“We need you to stay in the fight to be a check on what the Democrats and the radical left want to do, what they want to undo, all that we’ve done.  Our agenda is about American greatness; their agenda is about American decline.” —Pence

It is true that Democrats want to undo a lot of what the Trump Administration has done, and rightly so.  The Trump Administration will go down as only the second since 1900 to leave office with negative job creation.  The economy tanked.  The deficit hit a record $3.1 trillion in FY2020. The partisan divide is greater than ever.  Nepotism and sycophancy at the highest ranks of government replaced competent leadership.  And faith in institutions like science, government and our Constitution have hit rock bottom because of the willingness of Trump and his followers to undermine confidence in them to prop up the ego of the titular head of the Republican Party.

Pence and the GOP are in a cycle where they do not promote American greatness, regardless of what they claim.  They promote Trump’s greatness (falsely).

“They want to make rich people poorer and poor people more comfortable.” —Pence

For a guy who claims to be a “christian,” Pence appears to have never read the Gospels.

First, Democrats don’t want to make “rich people poorer.”  Increasing taxes on new income of someone worth $100 million by 12% would not make the person poorer.  They’ll still be gaining wealth.

And then there’s the whole “camel through the eye of a needle” thing Christ talked about.

Second…. well, yeah, we want to make “poor people more comfortable.”  We want them to have food, housing and health care security.  These are basic human needs that would help them feel comfortable–if by “comfortable” you mean able to survive.  The measure of a society is not how the wealthiest are treated, but how the poorest are.

And again, there’s the whole “whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers” thing Christ talked about.

“We have fought to make every American richer and that’s exactly what we’ve done.  Under President Donald J. Trump, median household income in American rose by the largest amount ever recorded.”  —Pence

And so starts the legacy construction for Trump.  Of course, it’s based on a lie.  Pence neglects to calculate the losses–in both lives and wealth–caused by the Administration’s mishandling of the pandemic.

He also cites an incorrect claim, propagated by conservative media outlets.  During Obama’s second term, incomes rose faster than during Trump’s single term, according to data from the US Census Bureau.  We don’t have data from Trump’s last year in office, but given that 20 million Americans are still out of work, the likelihood that Trump’s legacy will be a richer America is not strong.

“Today, Democrats openly advocate an economic system that has impoverished millions around the world.  Under the guise of ‘Medicare For All’ and a ‘Green New Deal,’ Democrats are embracing the same tired economic theory that have impoverished nations and stifled the liberties of millions of people over the last century.” —Pence

This is a multilayered lie with some good ol’ fashioned willful ignorance mixed in.  First, not all Democrats have embraced the level of Democratic Socialism advocated by some on the far left wing of the party.  Second, it’s not the “same tired economic theory” Pence wants to characterize it as, which is pure socialism.

Finally, the idea of a universal health care system and an aggressive environmental protection policy isn’t a failing prospect.  In fact, it’s the one in use in European nations that have a higher median income than the US, like Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

And now, Pence goes from sublime to ridiculous

At this point in the speech, Pence undertakes a series of absurd statements about “freedom versus socialism” in which he clumsily tries to say “freedom” provided a number of things.  And this is where conservatism goes off the rails.  It willfully ignores the role of government, government regulations, slavery, forced conscription–and yes, even old fashioned socialism–plays in the growth of the United States.

“It was freedom, not socialism, that gave us the most prosperous economy in the history of the world.” — Pence

Firstly, the US economy is in a downturn, so to say that the current US economy is “the most prosperous economy in the history of the world” is wrong, if not downright silly.

Secondly, that prosperity is exceptionally unequal.  Within the realm of First World nations, the United States has one of the greatest inequalities of wealth, with the top 1% controlling more than 20% of all income, ranking the US as the 12th least equitable in the world.  Those ahead of us on the list include countries like Iraq, Russia and Qatar.  Even oil-rich principalities such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait don’t have that type of disproportion of wealth.

Finally, for more than a third of its existence, the wealth of the United States was based on free labor from slaves.  After the Civil War, that wealth was built on near-slave wages for freed Blacks as well as exploited immigrants.

“It was freedom, not socialism, that ended slavery, won two World Wars, and stands today as a beacon of hope for all the world.”  —Pence

Pence fails to acknowledge that it was through a military made up of forced conscripts, not “freedom,” that the US won the Civil War and two World Wars.  He also doesn’t note that World War II was won not by “freedom” but by the US government literally practicing socialism:  taking over the means of production for the war effort.  The government controlled the entire supply chain, even rationing food and gasoline, during the war.

Pence also fails to recognize that the Trump Administration has not only sought to force people to honor slave holders and secessionists, but also that by Trump’s attempts to undermine the Constitution and the democratic election win of President-elect Joe Biden, the “beacon of hope” mantle is crumbling on his watch.

“It is freedom, not socialism, that is moving us beyond the prejudices of the past to a more perfect Union and extend the benefits of liberty to every American regardless of race or creed or color.” —Pence

Note Pence fails to include in his list gender or sexual identity.

More importantly, however, it wasn’t “freedom” that continues to push people out of their prejudices.  It’s the Courts enforcing laws which conservatives fought tooth-and-nail against.  It was the laws that were passed by legislatures on the State and Federal levels that ensured these, not “freedom.”

“You here at TP USA know that is was freedom, not socialism, that gave us the highest quality of life, the cleanest environment on Earth to improve the health and wellbeing of millions around the world.” —Pence

The US has neither the cleanest environment (New Zealand, Denmark and Canada are widely rated the cleanest) nor the highest quality of life (the US doesn’t even rank in the top 10 in most polls).  And how the US ranks in these has very little to do with the “wellbeing” of people outside the US.

“So I challenge you , this generation, on this day and every day forward, to speak with one voice:  that America will be a land of freedom and America will never be a socialist country.” —Pence

Given that the Trump Administration doled out billions of dollars in socialist payments to farmers and industry as Trump’s trade wars failed–even before the pandemic–this is a farcical statement coming from Pence.

SUMMARY

Many in American do not live in the style of “freedom” Pence glorifies, which is nearly exclusively enjoyed by white “christian” males–overwhelmingly the audience make-up of a TP USA meeting.

Trumpism–and the “future leaders of the conservative movement” as Pence described the attendees–grasp onto empty rhetoric and a false recounting of history.  The course of “freedom” is not the smooth, faultless road Pence describes, and the vacuous heads of the attendees soak up.  Freedom is sometimes won after generational fights, not wars, done within and outside the Constitutional bounds of our nation.