Where Truth Lies

We are living in a post truth world.  Whereas lying has persisted for as long as humans have been able to vocalize a thought, modern discourse has blurred the limits of dissemblance to the point of removing any meaningful barriers to mendacity. (If you're a Trump supporter, this means that people are telling bigger lies more often, yw.) And the lies are getting bigger and more ubiquitous: to paraphrase Hitler, if you’re going to tell a lie, make it a big one and tell it often.  Somehow, grifters and politicians have always known that a good lie is more acceptable to human ears than an uncomfortable truth.  Now they have also learned that raising doubt as to credibility is as good as destroying it.

The recent lightning rod of public outrage, the Catholic school boy/native American thing, is a case in point.  Forget about all the chest beating on both sides of the question and ask yourself, what possible scenario would put the righteous adolescents on the right side of this issue (right meaning ‘correct’)?  Do adolescents behave poorly?  Do groups of people wearing the Trump uniform and marching to oppose women’s reproductive rights tend to be confrontational?  Do frogs have waterproof skin?

And yet, a groundswell of support for these sectarian storm troopers (The Trump Youth, if you will) has popped up all over social media with one of the central figures (the grinning white kid in the MAGA hat) claiming that he was reciting a prayer of peace at the time.  He claims that his entitled smirk and stare weren’t about intimidation or disrespect but out of fear, uncertainty, and a desire to defuse the situation.  I figure you have to be the king of confirmation bias to turn this little turd’s explanation into anything resembling truth.

But already, some of my ‘friends’ are expressing doubt or being thankful that the situation didn’t descend into violent confrontation and that it epitomized freedom of speech.  I suppose we could be grateful that National Guard wasn’t called in or that Donald Trump didn’t waddle into the fray (oh wait; he did) but maybe a little violent confrontation was what was called for.  After all, one of the reasons we have gotten to this sorry juncture in history is that we have been tolerant of the intolerant.  These future humans should have been taught that freedom of speech has boundaries that they crossed and that crossing boundaries demands consequences.

Civil society can not work under the laws of advertising or the glaring injustices of the American courtroom.  By all means claim that your cleanser removes 99% of germs, (leaving the remaining 1% to flourish and reproduce without competition) but don’t propagate the lies that cripple social justice and beggar the vast majority while enriching the parasitic few.  By all means try to keep a man from lethal injection by introducing doubt into a jury’s minds but don’t use the same tactic to obfuscate the guilt of the rich and felonious who presently hold justice by the throat.

Not gluttony, not lust, not wrath, but deception should be the deadliest sin for those who purport to follow a religion.  If we don’t value truth above all else, what does that say about our beliefs and aspirations?  If we don’t expose and oppose the Wormtongues and serpents in our Garden of Eden, what sort of paradise are we creating?