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Tag: The Truth

Delusion, witchcraft, and the conservative way

A typical idyllic Trump household. Photo by Jon Gary.

Despite the pandemic, My Friend Jon gets out quite a bit. Rides his bike all over the county. He recently posted on Facebook a photo he took of this house blanketed by big TRUMP WON banners. Life-size cut-outs of Trump on the front lawn, and a two-dimensional Trump and Melania at the front door, greeting visitors.

I’ve stumbled across similar conservative urban trail markers. Here’s a house all dressed up in DON’T BLAME ME I VOTED FOR TRUMP banners. It’s just a two-minute drive from where we live:

This one needs a bigger U.S. flag.

Here’s another one, just one street over from our house. TRUMP 2024 it says. With images of handguns, brandished in a threatening manner. In the spirit of holiday décor, it recently added “TRUMP” spelled out in white Christmas lights in the front window. I walk the dog, Abilene, past it a couple of times a week:

Hello neighbor!

Who lives in these homes? Are they crazy? Are garish exhibits of personal political statements a Republican thing? I don’t recall Democrats draping their homes with HILLARY WON banners after the 2016 election. And Clinton did win the popular vote, so at least there would have been some truth to that one.

What’s happening inside these homes? They’re debating Critical Race Theory. They don’t know what it is, except… something, something, murmur, mumble… something about Black people.

No one who lives in these houses seems able to cite any specific evidence proving that THE ELECTION WAS STOLEN. All they know – and this really is all they know – is the vote didn’t tally up to what they were hoping for. They don’t know exactly what happened, except… some, some, murmur, mumble… something about the libtards.

Something grand-sounding like these words, which I conveniently created just for this essay, might be chiseled on the granite base of a forgotten statue covered in pigeon shit in your town square:

If we trust each man, woman and dog to be the curator of their own truths, then the rules of society will inevitably crumble.

We’re seeing the cracks widen now…

Domestic terrorists can attack the United States Capitol in an attempt to reverse the results of the November election and overthrow the government. And be hailed by conservatives as HEROES.

A 17-year-old kid can drive to another state, with an illegally obtained AR-15, shoot three people – killing two of them – and earn the praise of conservatives. And earn a trip to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Without offering any evidence, Republican Lauren Boebert can accuse her fellow congressional representative, Democrat Ilhan Omar, of being a Muslim terrorist.

Maybe this is a matter of you can’t see the morning until you’ve stayed up fretting all night. Sometimes, society’s norms do hold up.

A tourist at the Capitol building, on an invitation from Trump.

Because Unite the Right organizers have been found liable for millions in damages after a white-power rally in Charlottesville, Va. Because the conservative conspiracy entertainment theorist Alex Jones has been found guilty of defaming the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. Because Trump White House political strategist Steve Bannon has been charged with criminal contempt for ignoring a subpoena from a congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. And because the manufacturers of voting machines are suing right-wing media groups for claiming, without offering any evidence, that the companies were involved in election corruption that put Joe Biden in the White House.

Can you imagine how extensive this network of corruption would have to be in order to subvert, state by state, a national election? And no one – NO ONE – has stepped forward with any evidence?

Perhaps it’s a matter of personal perspective. Through which lens do you choose to view the world? What has caused more hospitalizations and deaths, COVID or donuts? Either answer is correct, depending on the time frame you choose.

There can be many variables, but ultimately only one truth. In 2020, in the final thrashing year of the Trump presidency, the Department of Homeland Security finally acknowledged that violent white supremacy is “the most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland.”

Not Muslim congresswomen. They’re not even on the Lethal Threats to the Homeland chart.

We’ve seen these TRUMP WON banners before.

Johannes Kepler, risking prison for the truth.

Centuries ago, mathematicians and astronomers such as Galileo, Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes Kepler were calculating how our universe worked. Yet they were cautious about being too loud about presenting their evidence that we live in a heliocentric solar system. The progress of European civilization was hindered by too many Flat Earthers, and by a Catholic church that insisted the Earth was the center of the universe, and by believers that the hand of God was behind the death of every sparrow. The advance of humanity was stunted under threat of prison and torture. True, a smattering of cultures ranging from the Chinese to the Maya seemed to have a better grasp of cosmology. But let’s not award too much credit to a culture that, as a religious offering, would cut the beating hearts from the chests of enemies captured in battle, or even the hearts of their neighbors.

Humanity is only one rung up from the Black Widow spider, notorious for eating its mate.

Acceptance of facts and truth is critical to society moving forward. But when rejected, facts and truth are equally valuable as tools that reveal prejudice or lack of education. Displays of ignorance is a Geiger counter, its escalating chatter betraying the danger at hand.

Awareness of their willful ignorance warned us of who would be waving those TRUMP flags on the steps of the Capitol building on January 6.

When truth and science isn’t allowed in, witchcraft and superstition fill in the void. Human nature has always been open to delusion. Over the centuries, nothing has changed.

BE THE FIRST in your neighborhood to know when a new Critical Mass has been turned loose. Go to the “Subscribe” button on the web site jeffspevak.com for an email alert. You can contact me at jeffspevakwriter@gmail.com.

Dogs committing editorial comment

It’s coming to an end. Maybe. Trump had a rally a week ago at the fairgrounds in Circleville, Ohio. I had to tune in to that one, as I’ve driven past the site for many years when visiting my in-laws. It’s reliably Republican territory, so the place was packed. The usual Trump scene. No masks. No social distancing. No one at these events is going to pass on an opportunity to “own the libtards,” as they like to say, by paying any mind to science.

As I listened to Trump, I thought of the Pickaway County Fair. And how, with the car windows rolled down, I could hear the excitement of people as they took in the amusement park rides, the food vendors, maybe a vintage car show that afternoon. And there would be the animal sheds, and the smell of…

Bullshit.

The same smell emanating from Trump at the Pickaway County Fairgrounds.

Stanford University researchers have presented a study that shows Trump rallies may have caused 30,000 new coronavirus cases and 700 additional deaths. According to the science: “The communities in which Trump rallies took place paid a high price in terms of disease and death.”

Trump, and his acolytes, live in an alternate reality. They’re not stupid, they choose to believe the unbelievable. Of all the horrors of the Trump presidency, the worst is what he’s done to The Truth. Without The Truth, at our southern border children can be separated from their parents and placed in cages. Without the Truth, Russians are free to meddle in our elections and place bounties on the heads of our soldiers in Afghanistan. Without The Truth, racism and the assault on our climate will continue unabated. And without The Truth, the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic will continue to grow.

In recent months, Facebook has pretended it is some kind of Socrates of social media. But it also can’t handle The Truth. My Friend Karen – not one of those Karens – posted a photo on Facebook of a dog peeing on a Trump lawn sign. Facebook took it down. So I’ll put it back up:

This photo is editorial content. It does not rise to the dangerous level of the president using social media to urge citizens to inject bleach to fight COVID-19, or incite violence against Muslims or Mexicans. Or Americans who exercise their right to protest.

And just in case some social media detective takes down My Friend Karen’s photo of a dog peeing on a Trump campaign sign, here’s another one:

Dogs committing editorial comment. They’re everywhere. Fighting them is useless.

There is no need here to recite, once again, the horrors of the Trump presidency. They are well documented. We only need to remember what Joe Biden reminded us of at their last debate. We know who Trump is. We know who Biden is.

Last night, I watched an excellent documentary. “The Way I See It” is the story of Pete Souza, who was the official photographer for the Reagan presidency, and then all eight years of the Obama White House. And Souza is now using his images to emphasize the contrast between Obama and Trump.

Obama. Souza shows us he is dignified. Intelligent. Well read and informed. Funny, even. Loves his daughters, his wife, and his dogs. And, if you do watch the documentary, there is a word that comes up often as people talk about Obama. Empathy. We hear it time and again. Empathy for the parents who lost children at the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Empathy for people who lost their homes in natural disasters. Empathy for soldiers who have lost limbs or been paralyzed while fighting in Afghanistan.

Obama is a real human being. Trump? He’s bullshit.

BE THE FIRST in your neighborhood to know when a new Critical Mass has been turned loose. Go to the “Subscribe” button on the web site jeffspevak.com for an email alert. You can contact me at jeffspevakwriter@gmail.com.

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