Anyone questioning the integrity of the 45th President of the United States might be feeling a little ashamed of themselves after observing his recent interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham.  When asked by Ms. Ingraham if he would block the testimony of former national security advisor John Bolton by declaring executive privilege, President Trump righteously professed that since he has never done anything wrong in his entire life he would be perfectly comfortable allowing any testimony, except for one thing- the impact that would have on future presidents.  The Commander in Chief said that furthermore he would be absolutely delighted to have Mick Mulvaney and Mike Pompeo or anyone else testify for that matter, but “there are things you can’t do from the standpoint of executive privilege,” the president insisted.

To further explain the president’s assertion later in the day, presidential spokesperson Kellyanne Conway said “You can’t have people sitting there in front of other people and blabbing away about special secret stuff.  Everyone knows what a beacon of integrity the president is, and the country should appreciate the extraordinary sacrifice he is making to protect the responsibilities of the executive branch in the future.  Of course he has nothing to hide, but what about the next president.  What if sometime we don’t have enough nice, simple people around who believe everything the president says and believe he can do anything he wants?  What would happen then?  What if a future president didn’t have the foresight to stow away personal transcripts in a secret server.  And what if all of a sudden a president had to reveal his tax return information? Then where would this country be?   President Trump has a lot to lose by preventing the  people around him from testifying and exonerating him.  They know what an impeccably  moral and  principled man he is and  many of them know all about the corruption going on everywhere, er, in the Ukraine of course, but there he is, courageously making this magnanimous, selfless gesture, risking groundless suspicion of his unblemished character and honorable intentions in order to defend this great country of ours.  That’s  just the kind of righteous, noble and patriotic man he is. Any doubt about the courageous sincerity of the president is discordant fiction being spread by the fake news.  Those people need to wise up.”

Devoted Trump supporter and rabid rally attendee Bud Mudd couldn’t agree more.  “I’ve traveled to all parts of the country just to hear President Trump talk the truth as I understand it, and he has never failed to deliver.  If you go to one of his rallies you can just sense his honest, saintly goodness and know right off he will always tell the truth.  He knows just the kind of straight talk the crowd wants to hear. You can’t blame him for using that privilege of executive obstruction thing.  Shoot I wouldn’t want just anybody to find out about some of the stuff I did. Not that he’s done anything wrong  but he’s got to protect those presidents coming up.  Hell I bet  Don Junior is as good as any for that job, and so ya, it would be smart to have some protection for a kid like that.  If he wants to go off shooting elephants and tigers  that’s his business.”

 

 

 

Well here’s something that scares the shit out of me.  We live in a time of immense intellectual sophistication, with access to information in manners that are almost infinite, and yet in spite of that, in fact because of that, our species is not only more confused, but more and more of us are throwing in the towel when it comes to the act of critical thinking.  You can’t get through the week without encountering some kind of reporting about this from a sociologist or expert on cyber sciences.

The problem we are facing has to do with the truth and the dissemination of propaganda.  Because there are multiple biased sources of information, the truth today is easily  manipulated and transmitted through multiple believable authors a multiple number of times until the truth becomes unrecognizable and the average person doesn’t know what to believe. What we now have is  an enormous population that has given up, and won’t take the time to research the truth.  It is just easier then to let passion override reason.  Although commentary will almost always point  out distortion of the truth is considerably more impactful when it is promoted by an authoritative  figure like President Trump, both liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, are guilty of promoting faulty information.

This is bullshit.  Society should be evolving into a higher place.  Are we devolving into turkey-like creatures capable of little intellectual activity other than staring at the sky?  Ben Franklin said  “Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn.”  Our founding fathers understood that democracy critically depends on an informed public.  The truth is out there.  We need to demand it.

Contact your state congressional representatives.  A huge majority of the American public wants to hear from any administration official with personal knowledge of what went on with the Ukrainians, and see related documents.  If the president truly wants to be vindicated, that is exactly what is required.  Let your elected officials know you want the truth. We should also demand to know what the urgency was in assassinating Qasem Suleimani.  We’ve been down this road before with the lying about Tonkin Gulf and WMD in Iraq.  Let your official representatives know you want the truth.

If you see some bullshit on Facebook, call it out.  Report it.  Reply with the demand that the comment in question be fact checked.  It’s relatively easy.  Tell the author to look at any number of fact checking services- allsides.com and factcheck.org are just two.  I have done this a number of times.  Every so often I even receive a reply of thanks instead of the usual request that I engage in some form of complicated intercourse with myself.

This is  becoming a frightening situation.  There are now supposedly intelligent members of congress like Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham publicly stating they do not want to have anything to do with the truth, and even worse, the example of Kevin McCarthy promoting completely debunked  Russian conspiracy theories.  That is not right, these people should know better, and need to be held accountable.  Constituents of districts represented by this type of unsavory misconduct should be embarrassed.  Democracy can work, but it is the public’s responsibility to make it work.

“All lies and jests, Still a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest.”  Simon and Garfunkel   from The Boxer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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