It’s not simple and it’s not easy. Truth is
hard to get your hand around, yet, we must. It seems harder today than decades
before. Some want to confuse us with misdirected facts, visuals that seem real
but are photo-shopped. We have reached a point in public discourse where many
accept leaders that lie blatantly, repeatedly, and with disregard for its
effects.
Truth can be a noun, an adverb, an adjective,
or a verb. Rhetoricians can worry about the distinctions. The public wants to
assume a strong correlation between truth and reality when our leaders speak. We
accept scientific facts as truth; light and heavy objects fall at the same
speed in a vacuum, electricity is a charge moving through a wire, water flows
downhill, and hot air rises. In the past, we trusted the word of our
governmental leaders, most of them at least. We accepted the word of our
teachers because they were better educated than most of us, at least when we
were young. It’s not that easy anymore.
The powerful nations use the power of social
media to create confusion about our democratic system, to lie to us about those
they don’t like, and to influence our electoral processes. They did it in our
last two elections and they did it this week during elections in Taiwan. We
know this because we have the facts to prove it. Yet many don’t care.
A third to nearly half of the American
population, including members of Congress, refuse to believe that Russia
interfered in our elections or that they are doing it again as we prepare for
the 2020 election. The Congress, even with the urging of the Department of
Homeland Security refuses to pass laws or allocate money sufficient to secure
our electoral databases and systems. Even with the overwhelming evidence that electric
companies are shutting down fossil fuel generating plants because of high costs,
the government continues to support the coal mining industry instead of
alternative sources of energy. The cable news channels sell their viewpoint on
current events rather than sticking to facts. Government spokespersons call
lies alternative facts.
At the highest levels of government, it seems
acceptable to lie several times a day to millions of followers. Our leaders lie
not only to their own citizens, but also to the leaders of the rest of the
world, and god knows who else. Does it even matter anymore?
I guess it depends on who you ask. We
assassinated a military leader of Iran last week, who by all accounts deserved
what he got. Our leaders, however, could not come to us with one voice and tell
us why we killed the despotic general when we did. On Face The Nation,
yesterday, Secretary of Defense Esper stated that he had not seen any credible
intelligence that indicated that the Iranians were about to blow up four of our
embassies. He stated that Trump merely said he “believed” that there “probably
could have been” attacks planned. What was the urgency? Does it even matter?
Yes! If the government is not telling us the truth, it matters!
Foreign leaders don’t trust our government anymore
because of the lies that have come from our leaders. It matters. The fourth
estate is labeled as fake news. The media, whose job is to comfort the afflicted
and afflict the comfortable, all the while getting to the truth, is called the enemy
of the state. Those are words that Hitler and Stalin used on their way to
creating dictatorships.
Presidents who lie to the public are not the
creation of the current times. Nixon lied to the American people about the
Watergate break-in and tried to cover it up. It resulted in his resignation.
Lyndon Johnson lied about our involvement in the Vietnamese war. He did not
seek reelection. Senator Gary Hart dared the press to find him committing
adultery. They did. He, a leading presidential candidate, dropped out of the
race and changed forever the relationship between the press and the private
lives of politicians. John Kennedy lied about his serious health condition and
his dalliances with movie stars and other women of note. He died before the
truth became public. However, there is something different going on today. Too many
people are buying the lies, drinking the Kool-Aid!
The bromides tell us that the truth will set us
free. Not today! Another says that if you tell the truth you won’t have to
remember what you said. Nobody cares! Another tells us that in the end truth
will prevail. People ignore it for a better story! It is too simple to blame it
on social media. Not enough bother to check the daily news anyway! It is too
simple to blame it on 24/7/365 news updates. Too many cable TV and talk-radio
shows spew lies and hatred, not the truth. It is too simple to blame it on low
attendance at weekly religious services. That phenomenon started in the ‘60s.
It is not a simple problem but it needs fixing.
The American experiment relies on the populace’s
strong belief in our republican democracy. It requires a belief that our
leaders, at all levels, will be square with us, that what they say can be
trusted. The system can tolerate some misspeak because of a lack of data
or understanding. It can tolerate some exaggeration to make a point, up to a
point. It cannot, however, sustain for long, barrages of daily lies from our
leadership cadre or the lies of other nations trying to influence our thinking
and blending reality with myth.
We believe in free speech, strongly. People can
say nearly anything they want, true or false, mean or nice, hate-filled or
commending. That doesn’t mean that they should lie, convolute the facts, brag
about accomplishments not attained, or threaten non-believers.
It’s not a simple problem, but it starts with
us telling the truth and then demanding that our leaders tell the truth when
they speak to us or tweet to us. It’s a simple start, but most are.
