Republicans are openly proud of their lies — but our disdain for the truth is bipartisan
Nobody’s making it easy for anyone these days.
Let’s start with Donald Trump. The former president still won’t accept he lost the 2020 election, he lies about immigrants eating pets and continues his baseless claims that women are carrying fetuses full term – only to kill them after they are born. He's also an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon, but that’s another story.
The rampant stupidity and numb ignorance from him is frightening. But Trump is just the vanguard for political hatred and violence.
Consider this: Israel has a right to defend itself. Innocent Jews and Palestinians have a right to live their lives without threats. Both are still dying in the Middle East as Israel blows up pagers. Gun violence is unacceptable, but we don’t want to regulate automatic weapons. Politics is about ideas and ideals, but only if we “like” the politician. War is unacceptable, but we accept it. We want criminals to serve time – unless they’re running for president.
We are a country, and a world, chasing its tail – vacillating between hatred, anger and a desire for peace. Many of us seem incapable of understanding critical or rational thought. We just point our finger at those we disagree with and call them foul names - or worse.
Good news? Well, the Federal Reserve tried to deliver some Wednesday by lowering its prime interest rate by .5 percent, but Trump screamed foul. His minions claimed they were victims. They also screamed “It’s all the Democrats’ fault,” as well as, “We’re going to Hell,” we’re a nation in decline, and if you’re not frightened by now, then by the way, World War III. Trump really doesn’t want to make it easy.
It’s a withering attack and a continuing one on rationality and the nation’s well-being, where there’s a guard on every door and a drink on every floor (apologies to Tom Petty.)
How can this continue, some ask?
Good question. I’m still trying to come to grips with the fact that thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies blew up simultaneously in Lebanon killing and injuring hundreds of people. The targets were apparently Hezbollah operatives targeted by the Israeli government, we’re told. Casualties included children. It was an act of blatant terrorism - and apparently taken by a sovereign nation. Who knew it could even be done? Who thought it up? How insidious is it? It’s like a scene out of a James Bond movie, or "The Kingsmen." It’s real comic book crap.
When I asked a senior White House official if they could speak to whether or not similar booby traps were contained in American communication devices I was rebuked; “I can’t speak to that.” I was told. Ummm, That’s not reassuring. Neither was NSC spokesperson John Kirby’s refusal to answer any specific questions in the briefing room Wednesday about who was behind the explosions, if we are in danger, or whether or not the conflict in the Middle East is widening - even as it obviously is. That we don’t acknowledge the widening of the conflict tells you just how pervasive propaganda and disinformation are within the government, politics and the press.
The only thing we know for certain, according to Kirby, is we weren’t behind the pager explosions. Israel? Our government ain’t saying nothin’. Not making it easy.
The one question Kirby did answer was about Russian disinformation. “It’s a constant topic of conversation,” Kirby explained. That’s food for thought. Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre had to field a question about the security of the coming election. We expect “free and fair elections” and the peaceful transfer of power, respecting the results of the election, she said on Wednesday. Even though polls show some Republicans would try to forcefully overthrow the government if they lose, Jean-Pierre kept her cool as she clumsily tried to walk reporters through the renewed prospect of Biden defending the Capitol from violent insurrection should Donald Trump lose another election — all because of his irritating inability to accept any defeat.
Meanwhile, if you’re still wondering what is real and what isn’t, the CIA, according to a whistleblower, lied to Congress and the FBI about the “Havana Syndrome.” And while the CIA continues to say they haven’t done that, facts indicate otherwise.
So, I’m back to this: No one is making it easy for anyone these days. Donald Trump is merely the worst offender among the worst of us. But none of us are immune from fictional fabrications, and many in public life use those manipulations to make their lives easier at the expense of others.
In one of my last conversations with Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the White House during the Trump administration, she informed me she was leaving her post to take care of her kids.
“If you’re telling me the truth,” I said to her, “then good for you. Work will always be there but you only have one chance to raise your kids. That’s a wise choice.”
A short time after she left the White House she announced she was running for governor in Arkansas. Exactly. Flash forward and over the weekend she announced that her kids keep her humble and then attacked Vice President Kamala Harris for not having any kids to keep her humble. Sanders isn’t making it easy to like her with that statement. There was little truth and no humility in it. But hypocrisy and rage is all the MAGA crowd has left – and they play the few notes they have as virtuosos.
As Bob Dylan noted, the Trump crowd doesn’t see the frowns as the jugglers and clowns do all of their tricks for them. Forget the rock guitar player who can make it on just three chords (though Neil Giraldo’s “Three Chord” bourbon is an exception), there are modern politicians of the Trump ilk who are making it on just three notes; despair, anger and hatred. Or, if you prefer the Hee Haw version, it’s “Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me,” with Trump, Sanders, JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson subbing in for Grandpa Jones, Gordie Tapp, Roy Clark and Archie Campbell. I mention actors playing fictional characters in a former popular television show because that’s where we are: fiction.
We see it in our politics. Want to understand Donald Trump? Walk through a mall. Go to church. Ask for customer service. It’s all a fiction, and Donald Trump uses it to try and manufacture a reality in his own head – then he tries to force the rest of us into accepting his solipsistic fictional universe as reality. That’s why he refers to Hannibal Lecter as a real human being. That’s why his minions buy whatever he says. Facts are fiction. Fiction is fact, and oh, look they have a sale on sneakers at the mall. Not making it easy. Don’t worry. That’s what Jesus wants.
There are more websites dedicated to fiction than fact. There are corners of the internet that spend more time worrying about the etymology of Darth Vader’s name than the policies of any politician.
We have all the access we want to fiction and little that we need to understand facts. It is why Fox News reporter Peter Doocy can chastise the White House for calling Donald Trump a threat to democracy – when Trump’s own words have done that. It’s a fiction of convenience that speaks not only to MAGA and Trump’s particular disdain of the truth but to Trump’s supporters being unable to discern the truth. In fact, Trump counts on that. Fiction for self-preservation is the rule among the MAGA crowd.
I know Doocy and Sanders. They are both kind human beings. But there is nothing kind about what is done publicly in the MAGA world. The closer your attachment to Trump, the less kind you become. Lara Loomer anyone?
Thus, you can understand on one hand why Harris limits her interaction with the press. We don’t make it easy. While our manipulation of facts into fiction is also a part of the problem, it should never be forgotten that this separation of facts from reality is courtesy of the U.S. government which has systematically destroyed the free press during the last 40 years. We’re now only about selling you information that supports your personal beliefs – whether or not those beliefs are tethered to the facts or reality.
The only thing left worth trusting is the weather report – no matter how inaccurate it is. At least the weather report isn’t tainted by politics. Okay, so there’s climate change – I guess I’m wrong there too. Maybe sports reporting? Wait. No. Entertainment? Forget it.
Though Trump, again, is symptomatic of the disinformation problem, he is not the cause. We all share in that responsibility. Trump is merely the man most effective at using the tools to confuse you. He’s very good at conning millions of people into buying his grift. If you’re a Christian, you take him on faith and believe your world is full of enemies to be vanquished rather than neighbors to be loved. If you’re a MAGA supporter, then you believe him to be a truth teller, and if you’re anyone else you believe he’s nothing more than a grifter.
Either way, Trump’s ride is coming to an end like a character out of a Bob Dylan song. He is becoming increasingly invisible now as we find he no longer has any secrets to conceal. He’s on endless repeats with his litany of tirades, venomous and hate-filled rants. We’ve heard it all before, the only thing new is Harris as she laughed at Trump’s “eating the cats and dogs” statement during the debate, giving everyone else permission to laugh at the unserious man who demands fealty to his very dangerously serious cause - himself.
Like a character out of a Lou Reed song Trump has spent his lifetime saying, and in some cases placing ads preaching that we should give him our hungry, tired and poor so he could “piss on ‘em.” Well, that’s what the Statue of Bigotry says.
Harris has spent her time singing a different song. Like Sly Stone, she tells us we’re all the same whatever we do. We’re all everyday people. Yeah. Yeah. So, Madam Vice President, could you please have a press conference already?
We have to live together, and as Tom Petty told us, It is hard to say who we are these days but we run on anyway. Don’t we baby?
Like I said, no one is making it easy on anyone else.
