The Witness Chronicles, October 8, 2024
The truth, and only the truth
Those Demon Fact Checkers: Trump and Vance’s Greatest Fear
“You can’t handle the truth!”
Last night Kamala Harris was interviewed on Sixty Minutes, the highest rated news program on US television. It was one of multiple interviews she has scheduled this week designed to put her in front of audiences not always served by mainstream media, though Sixty Minutes is mainstream.
It has been a tradition to have presidential candidates on the show as an election nears. But Trump has refused this time around because the show’s producers insisted, as journalists should, that he be fact checked in real time.
In other words, that he not be allowed to lie nonstop, as he has been for this entire election campaign.
Think about this. A serious candidate for president, a former president, knows he is lying, and knows he will be called out for it. Not once, but every time and he cannot stand for that. Why?
Because he has no control over it. And he is not alone. His vice presidential candidate JD Vance, when fact checked just one time in his debate, complained about the fact checking, not about the validity of his statements.
Now think about these two men being our leaders, men who are willing to openly lie about anything to promote themselves. How would we know what is real and what is not in the world they live in? We wouldn’t and it looks more and more like they don’t know.
People talk themselves into fantasy worlds. Trump’s entire life is an example. He is rich, he is sexy, he is mesmerizing, he knows things intuitively, he is better than all of us. Except, by the standards of actual reality, he is none of these things.
The obvious question is does he believe what he is saying? I don’t think so. In Vance’s case, I am certain he does not because he has contradicted himself on virtually every lie, but he is an opportunist and nothing more. Trump is something different.
Somewhere along the line he discovered that a man with money can tell a big lie, with authority, and there will be those who believe it, or find it useful. The Republican Party now has embraced the latter and lying has become their equivalent of policy.
But there looms a powerful antidote to that ‘policy’: the truth. The actual facts. So, fact checking has become the one thing they cannot abide. And even a PR opportunity like being on a major news show in prime time is not worth the risk of facing the truth.
The fact that this race is a dead heat is really disturbing to this writer and it should be really disturbing to all of us. Are fifty percent of American voters really willing to elect two liars who no longer even pretend they are telling the truth? To run our country?
In my heart I do not believe this is the case but that may be unrealistic optimism in the face of what the numbers seem to tell us. I avoid polls like the plague these days and I no longer have any faith in what they seem to tell us, despite the pundits who live and die daily for them.
Why? Well, because of the lying. It has apparently become ok to lie, especially if the subject is politics. So why tell the truth to a stranger on the phone asking you what you believe? Actually, why even take the call?
People aren’t, and that is the problem with this dead heat race to November 5th. I don’t think anyone actually knows where this thing stands. I know I don’t. But I have to believe the truth will stand. There is a reason these men, Trump and Vance, fear this demon called the facts. You can create a sea of lies but one simple incontrovertible fact can wipe it away.
At least that is how it used to be. If we let these lies become the norm, we will have given up any right to the high ground, to be a democracy where each one of us has the right to speak up and speak truth to power.
There will be no proof, no facts, no reality except that which a government tells us. And those who defy that government will be crushed.
Take a look at Putin’s Russia if you doubt this. This week he offered pardons to indicted criminals if they will fight in his war against Ukraine. A real Get Out of Jail Free card. And Trump has already said he would do the same by pardoning the January Sixth insurgents.
Because truth is lies and lies are truth.
Speechless.
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Hi Martin, Thanks for keeping up the dialog on all this. One of the things that seems strange is why the New York Times does not seem to fact check Trump and Vance consistently. The will in an occasional editorial, but not in the main news feed. Sometimes I get the feeling they actually support Trump. It would help if the major news media would call a spade a spade.
Are 50% of the people willing to elect liars? I guess you didn't watch the other story on that same 60 Minutes episode, because the answer to your question is a resounding "Yes".
They had the Republican guy in charge of elections in Maricopa County, AZ--who triple checked all the 2020 election results--and said, "There is NO EVIDENCE of fraud in the 2020 election, Joe Biden WON". And then all the rest of the Repugs including a woman who has emerged as a leader and who said "God said I should fight him, he is wrong and evil" and literally said she would "lynch" the guy (on a recording that 60 minutes had of her). When Scott Pelly called her on it she said, "I meant a political lynching."
I do believe it was Jesus who coined the term "lynching," wasn't it? Or maybe God the father, himself?
There's a whole lot who have drunk the orange kool-aid. We can only hope there are more Repugs like Liz and (gulp, dare I say) Dick Cheney who are willing to do the right thing and vote for Kamala.
But I fear we are screwed. God only knows what these deranged lunatics will do if the PoS doesn't win.