Or as some asshole with a blog intermitently puts it, nothing in movement conservatism makes sense except in the light of creationism. Creationists have always used words as weapons by ingoring their straightforward meanings. It’s what they do.

A recent report explains the logic, such as it is, behind the Trump administration’s decision to not allow members of Congress to inspect certain ICE detention facilities (boldface mine):

The agency has repeatedly barred members of New York’s congressional delegation — who are supposed to be allowed to conduct unannounced visits to detention centers — from observing conditions inside. Reps. Nydia Velazaquez, Adriano Espaillat, Dan Goldman and Jerry Nadler, all Democrats, have been blocked from entering the 10th floor lockup.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has argued the 10th floor of the building “is not a detention center” but an “ICE law enforcement office,” and thus exempt from a law that allows federal lawmakers to make unannounced visits at “any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens.”

And Pinochet’s main rape, torture, and murder facility was a sport stadium, not a rape, torture, and murder facility, so CHECK AND MATE, LIBTURDS.

Snark aside, for a society to function, words must have meaning–and it is a hallmark of fascism when they do not. If things don’t become truly awful (see the aforementioned sports stadium) and Democrats are able to regain power in four years, if those who promulgated these falsehoods do not suffer any consequences, they will be primed to do it again; there is an argument to made that is why we are in this position to begin with.

So there must be consequences. I will leave it to lawyers to determine what is punishable by law, but it’s also important that civil society punish them too. Will those spokesmen who utter these statements be allowed, after the administration is done, to be ex-officials who are interviewed by news media, or will they be shunned, and viewed as the liars and propagandists they are? Will the lawyers that make these arguments, who have obligations as lawyers not just to their client, but as officers of the court, be disbarred (or at least made persona non grata by law firms)?

IF they are not repudiated–or more accurately, if those in our structures of governance, including news media, do not repudiate them–then I am afraid that any gains will be very short-lived. Unfortunately, the U.S. does not have a good track record of this sort of accountability, but this kind of detrumpification will be necessary. This level of dishonesty can not be treated as politics as usual, because in a nominally liberal society, when words have no meaning, this is not politics as usual.