Last month I reviewed a book called Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. The title says it all. Here is a brief quote from that review:

In Erasing History, Jason Stanley discusses how and why rewriting history is part of authoritarian and fascist governments method to gain power and eliminate democracy. This has happened in many counties around the world. So now I understand why they want us to believe their version of history and how they use it to enhance there power over the people.

The rewritten history was often something in the distant past. But in the Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past by Steve Benen, we see Donald Trump distorting the recent past and just making stuff up and almost all Republican politicians as well as the official party stance going along with it. And if polling is anywhere near accurate, this altered reality is either something the vast majority of Republicans actually believe or pretend to believe.

At first I thought of this book as reminder (with extensive references) of the ridiculous things said and apparently supported by the MAGA crowd. But now I think of it a demonstration of how rapidly a respectable
major political can shift from principles to idiocy.