Courtesy of wikipedia.org
Not long ago, a friend on Facebook posted a false comment. I responded with a Snopes link that refuted the statement. The friend shot back, “I don’t fact-check other people’s comments if I agree with them.”
O-k-a-y. Good to know, I thought. That was a MAGA sentiment if ever I’d heard one. The trouble was that the person who wrote those words was a liberal on the far left. What a puzzlement. If the MAGA world and the ultra-liberal world shared a disregard for truth, where was the country headed?
Our President has told the public so many lies that the press has stopped counting them, leaving the truth as fragile as Florida’s coral reef. Most of us recall that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the president suggested we report fatalities in a way that made the epidemic seem less catastrophic. In his second term, he’s applying that strategy to economic data. If he doesn’t like the numbers, he calls them false and threatens to find a new way to measure growth.
Despite his reputation as a liar, MAGA supporters believe Trump’s promises but dismiss his more outlandish ideas, like turning Gaza into a tourist destination or making Canada our 51st state. Many of them continue to think the 2020 election was stolen and praise those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, as patriots.
These same followers have not protested the president’s new Executive Order that expands his authority over state elections. Why would they? They’ve grown accustomed to his unlawful methods. When he lost his re-election bid, not one of them flinched when he was caught red-handed begging Georgia’s chief vote counter, George Raffensperger, to find him 11,780 votes.
Some of Trump’s changes might harm low-income and minority communities. For instance, it would grant Homeland Security subpoena power to review voter rolls. What could go wrong then?
I regret having to state the obvious, but the truth matters. It matters regardless of whether it supports or refutes our opinions. Without it, no common ground exists, and we waste our time talking past each other. Opinions say something about us, and nothing about the world we live in, except that human beings are prone to folly.
The aphorism, “It is better to know than not to know,” makes sense to everyone regarding tornado warnings. Yet, in the course of human events, some prefer pretense. Inwardly, we know falsehoods don’t work, no matter how firmly we set our jaws. If we wish to escape the political quagmire that exists, we must begin, not by speaking truth to power, but to ourselves.
BOYCOTT TESLA
