The truth is on trial. And it’s losing.
We can debate when it started, and who started it, but we’ve reached a point in this nation when many citizens no longer can tell truth from fiction. When that happens, how can you tell right from wrong?
Three examples in just three days underscore the threat.
Beginning with the madness about meat. The British newspaper The Daily Mail saw last week that President Biden wants to lower greenhouse emissions, then saw a study from the University of Michigan that looked at how emissions would go down if people ate less meat— you know, reducing the carbon footprint throughout the process from raising animals to moving meat to market— and the newspaper came up with an inescapable conclusion: Joe Biden wants to ban meat, or at least force us to eat a whole lot less of it.
If it had stayed on the British side of the Atlantic, this trumped up tabloid trash would have been little more than a curiosity about the Colonies. But it didn’t. With a provocative headline like “How Biden's climate plan could limit you to eat just one burger a MONTH,” it spread like flames when fat falls from a grill. From John Roberts on Fox News: “Say goodbye to your burgers.” From Texas Governor Greg Abbott: “Not gonna happen in Texas.” From Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert: “Why doesn’t Joe stay out of my kitchen?”
But here’s the thing: Joe doesn’t want to be in Boebert’s kitchen. Or yours either. He hasn’t said Word One about chopping meat from our diet, let alone banning it. Yet joining the ranks of the faked moon landing and the Loch Ness Monster, this is the latest, if not the loftiest, urban legend. And not likely the last.
A meatier one of course, and a far bigger threat to our society, is that Covid vaccines are bad. Not just bad, but dangerous. And not just dangerous, but a political plot.
A service call I had on the telephone to get an appliance fixed hammered this home.
The agent, a lovely loquacious lady in Louisiana, set up a time for a repairman to come to my house, and had to ask a few Covid-related questions, like, have I been in contact with anyone with Covid, have I been tested for Covid, have I been vaccinated for Covid? When I said yes to the last one, I casually asked in the course of conversation, “Have you?” The answer was an eye-opener.
She hadn’t. She’d had the opportunity— she could get an appointment if she wanted it— but she just wasn’t sure it was safe. Not because of reports of blood clots or reinfections or side effects from the shots themselves or anything like that. But because of things she’d heard about the vaccine.
Like how it goes into your arm from retractable needles, ostensibly to inject the solution but actually to insert a chip (developed by Bill Gates, some insist) that will then give the government 24/7 information on your whereabouts. Or a chemical in the vaccine that would induce us to vote in a certain way. Or that getting the Covid vaccine actually gives you Covid. Or because vaccine research began with monkeys, getting the vaccine might actually turn you into a monkey.
She was very candid and very clear: she didn’t necessarily believe all this stuff, she just didn’t know if it was dangerous not to. She certainly wasn’t arguing for it, but if she wasn’t sure it was untrue, how could she argue against it?
I didn’t ask where she’d heard all these fabrications about the vaccine, but it doesn’t really matter. Whether from family or friends or far-right politicians or Fox News pundits, she’d heard enough to make her wonder. And to make her scared.
And this came on the heels of one more piece of disinformation making the rounds right now on the internet: quotes attributed to Vice President Kamala Harris, dissing our military vets. Quotes that make it appear that she wants to close down the Veterans Administration, including the indispensable healthcare it provides. Quotes like, “The United States government cannot continue to pay for the every need of what has become a special class of citizen.” And, “Within these next four years, we will be shuttering the VA, taking away soldier welfare. The money saved will go to better use in assisting refugee families.” Then the coda to it all: “So here’s a message to the soldier boys. Get a job.”
This came to me from a friend who asked, “Is this for real” Of course it isn’t. Not only because every credible fact-checking site on the internet knocks it down as a total fabrication, but because if Kamala Harris has been savvy enough to be elected DA in San Francisco, then Attorney General in California, then U.S. Senator, then Vice President of the United States, she is savvy enough not to utter politically suicidal words like those, even if she believed them (and there is no evidence that she does).
But here’s an illuminating fact behind the slander: my friend had gotten it in an email with the heading, “Assume she has her communist hat on.” Does that tell you something?
It makes me think of the old telephone chain game, where a bunch of us sit in a circle and I whisper something into the ear of the person to my right… who then whispers it into the next person’s ear, and it keeps circulating until it’s my turn again. Inevitably, what I said at the beginning isn’t what comes back to me at the end. A bunch of things happen: someone mishears the message, or misinterprets what they heard, and yes, sometimes someone deliberately changes it to play a trick on the rest of us. By and large though, it’s the idiosyncratic side of human nature that changes the message, not anyone’s malicious motives.
But in the cases of the meat, the vaccine, the vice president, it’s the dark side of human nature that explains it. It’s the deliberate falsification of facts, designed to deceive or defame or destroy.
My motto as a journalist has always been, if it smells like a skunk, it’s a skunk. And make no mistake: those who disseminate deceptions like these have noses just like the rest of us. That’s why, if they circulate these fictions without checking them out, they are guilty at best of willful negligence. At worst, they are guilty of concocting and spreading damaging and dangerous lies.
We spend a lot of time in this country trying to prioritize our problems. Controlling climate change? Modernizing crumbling infrastructure? Reducing poverty? Taming the pandemic? I’d argue, this one might supersede all the others because when we no longer can tell simple truth from shameless fiction, and when some no longer care whether we can or not, we can no longer create consensus for solutions. We can no longer fix what’s broken.
The truth loses, we lose.
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For almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks, a political columnist for The Denver Post, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies at home and international crises around the globe. He won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Some of his essays also are published— with images— on a website he co-founded, BoomerCafe.com.
Greg, your article reminded me of how outraged I was last night when NPR News ran a clip of Tucker Carlson on Fox News blasting children wearing masks, and demanding his listeners call 911 to report child abuse if they observed such "terrible parents". You inspired me to write this email to Fox News:
I am outraged that your network allows one of your most popular news casters to share such a dangerous opinion about children wearing face masks! The uproar in communities all over the US is going to be catastrophic. Unnecessary 911 calls- taking police time away from criminal activity. Citizens feeling entitled to hassle parents who are doing what they believe is right. Fights, potential injuries! You should be ashamed! Please denounce Tucker Carlson's dangerous "call to action"
Greg, I don't know why I should be amazed at the loquacious Louisiana lady, but I am.
Including her in your story makes everything else more scary for people who care about truth. There are millions like her - lovely, decent, hard-working - who are skunked, hoodwinked, etc and don't engage their curiosity, plain common sense, and analytical skills to seek the truth.