When Words Have No Meaning
I got a question in my Substack office hours last week, asking why Republicans in the House were moving forward with an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. What is the point, the person asked, when there are almost certainly not enough votes to impeach, let alone convict? My answer was that attempting to analyze this effort as an attempt to actually impeach Biden completely misses the point. The purpose of the entire production is to keep the word “impeachment” buzzing around in connection with President Biden: After all, if there are impeachment proceedings against him, then who cares if Trump was impeached twice? Everyone gets impeached, big deal! The stigma of impeachment gets neutralized or, at the very least, attaches to both prospective presidential candidates, making them equally tainted.
In other words, the instigation of the impeachment process is simply propaganda — the outcome is irrelevant. Yale professor Jason Stanley writes that “political propaganda uses the language of virtuous ideals to unite people against otherwise objectionable ends.” Impeachment, a check and balance designed to curb executive overreach, is intended to be a constitutional guardrail for our democracy. In the Biden case, however, the virtual ideal of “checks and balances” is instead being used for political theater.
So how do we tell the difference between a real impeachment and a sham impeachment? Stanley explains that the difference lies in discerning the purpose behind the effort:
“The undemocratic intent behind fascist propaganda is key. Fascist states focus on dismantling the rule of law with the goal of replacing it with the dictates of individual rulers or party bosses. It is standard in fascist politics for harsh criticisms of an independent judiciary to occur in the form of accusations of bias, a form of corruption, critiques that are then used to replace independent judges with ones who will cynically employ the law as a means to protect the interests of the ruling party….In the name of rooting out corruption and supposed bias, fascist politicians attack and diminish the institutions that might otherwise check their power…”
