Guest Column by Jennifer Erickson

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson is a member of the Freeborn County DFL Party.

Remember the final scene in “Pretty in Pink” when entitled rich playboy Steff McKee humiliates Andie Walsh, and he smirks and lights a cigarette as she slinks away from prom in her embarrassing dress?

Or when the Malfoy family’s belief in the superiority of pure blood prevails in the “Harry Potter” series, and loser Mudbloods are expelled from the walls of Hogwarts? Or when amazing winner Ivan Drago destroys sad lightweight Rocky Balboa in the ring? Or when loudmouth tormenter Biff Tannen triumphs over weakling Marty McFly in the “Back to the Future” trilogy?

It’s really satisfying when the antagonist gets the glory. Audiences love to cheer for an obnoxious bully (or a cold-blooded Russian).

Wait, what?

This is what 2016 feels like. Opposite world.

According to Bob Gale, who wrote the “Back to the Future II” screenplay, Biff Tannen’s greedy, power hungry character is based on none other than Donald Trump, complete with a tacky self-referential portrait sneering behind his shoulder.

In the movie world, Biff Tannen’s self-serving intentions are thwarted, and the hero, Marty McFly, restores rightful order. But somehow in the real world, Biff Tannen’s human template won the presidency.

How did we get here? Obviously Hillary Clinton is no Marty McFly. Being capable, experienced and reliable doesn’t compensate for lack of charm. Furthermore, she was relentlessly cast as the villain by Trump, the Republican establishment, the right-wing media, a tide of fake news stories and Russian cyberattacks, which all reinforced negative beliefs about “Crooked Hillary.”

Daniel Poeppel, a neuroscientist in linguistics at New York University, explains that Trump’s repetition of simple phrases — and pairing Hillary’s name with a negative word which activates a threat response — made it easier to store that information in our brains. Then one word would prime the other whenever we heard it. (As Rep. Kevin McCarthy admitted, Republicans also did this through politically motivated hearings, pairing Hillary’s name incessantly with Benghazi.)

Once these ideas are stored together, they influence the way people take in new information. Before they may have been skeptical of fake news about Hillary, but now many accept it uncritically because it reinforces the pairings they already believe. These beliefs become difficult to override, and they can make people reject new, factual information that conflicts with their false beliefs.

Many Republican voters were already susceptible to lies about Hillary — even outlandish ones like Hillary death counts and child sex rings — because they had been conditioned for years to believe falsehoods about Obama.

Although Obama is Protestant and was born in Hawaii, 43 percent of Republicans polled last year by CNN responded that they believe he is Muslim, and more than 20 percent said he was born outside the U.S. Trump, a regular conspiracy theory purveyor, claimed up until summer 2015 that he didn’t know where Obama was born. It’s not surprising, then, that Trump supporters last May were unusually likely to believe these falsehoods, even for Republicans. In a Public Policy Polling survey, a whopping two-thirds of those who favored Trump in the Republican primary indicated belief that Obama is Muslim. Nearly three in five responded he was born outside the U.S.

Let that sink in — Trump’s most loyal base is primed to believe baloney.

So when Politifact rates Donald Trump’s statements as 15 percent true or mostly true and 69 percent mostly false or worse, and Hillary’s statements as 51 percent true or mostly true and 26 percent mostly false or worse, the obvious conclusion for them to draw is that Politifact is biased against Republicans. Never mind that there were Republican candidates who had ratings equivalent to Hillary’s, most notably Jeb Bush, but their candidacies were dead on arrival.

A more reasonable conclusion is that lies have greater traction than truth in the Republican party right now.

Thus, with Donald Trump set to assume the presidency in a few weeks, we are in an environment that is toxic to democracy. Our system of government depends on facts to function effectively. We know on some level that democracy isn’t our birthright, but we tend to put most emphasis on the way soldiers preserve our freedom — “Freedom isn’t free.” Democracy is mostly defended, though, in more mundane ways: voting, observation of political norms, respect for truth and putting country over party (or self interest).

Our democratic institutions must be constantly tended. Intentional or unintentional belief in falsehoods can have serious and avoidable consequences. When lies are ascendant instead of widely marginalized, they have to be reckoned with, or democracy withers from within.

It’s as if Steff McKee, Draco Malfoy, Ivan Drago and Biff Tannen characters have the upper hand now. We can’t just watch this like a movie and assume it’ll turn out OK in the end. It’s up to us to act. Speak out for truth, and don’t expect it to be easy.