It takes diligence, many times, to arrive at the truth about complicated things.  It is a process that sometimes involves pain and can result in punishment.   Many truths are hard to accept, so we retreat to endless nuance, interpretation, seeing it from another point of view.  Certain truths, if you don’t see them in time, will smash your face and leave you wondering how you wound up bloody and chained in a sadist’s basement.

Lies, on the other hand, can be constructed to fit your needs perfectly.  Feel threatened but can’t put your finger on what’s going on?  How about this: there is a vast conspiracy conducted by elites, who are beloved public figures, very influential, who, behind the scenes, meet to share child sexual slaves and drink their blood?   Doesn’t that explain why your spidy senses are tingling?   If you fear a certain type, the lie becomes much more potent by slugging those folks into the scenario.   It’s Puerto Rican pedophile cannibals, Jewish ones (of course), Muslims, Illegals, etc.

Obvious as it was once I heard Timothy Snyder say it out loud: the thousands of brazen lies we have been told by Trump and his spokes-sphincters over the last nine years have smudged the line between truth and lies.  Truth, what is that, really?   Aren’t alternative facts really just another spin on your so-called actual facts?  Different strokes for different folks.  Isn’t truth what you believe in your heart?  Doesn’t your heart know what is real, much better than an easily confused brain?

Once the line is sufficiently blurred it is time for the Big Lie.  This is a lie so audacious that people simply can’t believe it’s a lie — it’s unthinkable that a Hitlerian scale lie could be told over and over by everyone in a political party.  If 25% of  Americans actually believed the endless ads Trump ran that his 2020 election victory had been stolen from him, as Ted Cruz insisted on January 5th, 2021, isn’t that a reason to call time-out until the other 75% could be convinced of the same thing? 

Here is five minutes of Snyder’s brilliant discussion of this hideous, all too popular, dynamic.  Truth can be elusive and involves pain sometimes, lies are direct and easy to swallow, designed to make you feel just and righteous. Which one is your favorite?