It is truly the silly season. Besides menus consisting of pets, just reading the quotes of Mr. Trump shows he seems to have lost any constraint on lies and incoherent speech. We have all read and heard them, so my one question is how anyone could vote for him to lead the country for the next four years. Forget about policy and his racial and religious prejudices and distain for women, just listen or read what he says and see his inability to enunciate the simplest thought.
Some of the biggest rooters for the Democrats are my admittedly liberal friends in Europe. Many of them stayed up overnight to watch the debate (the time zones are five to six hours ahead of us here on the East Coast), and all were overjoyed with the result. We have to realize that people around the world understand the power and influence of our country and the effect another four years of Trump would have on their lives.
There is a new comprehensive survey out by Northwestern University analyzing the U.S. data on immigrant crime versus citizen crime. One of the conclusions of this exhaustive study is that immigrants commit less crime than citizens, and in the last 60 years or so, they commit 30 percent less crime than white citizens. Apparently that gap is widening. Just Google Northwestern’s study on immigrant crime. That said, millions of people believe the Republican lies about a nation under siege.
It seems Americans have an aversion to the truth, as demonstrated by science and academia. In a New York Times article on September 20, Dr. Francis Collins, an Evangelical Christian and the former director of the National Institute of Health under Obama, Trump, and Joe Biden, writes about how “Figuring Out the Truth Is a Matter of Life or Death.” He details the development of “safe and effective mRNA vaccines for COVID in 11 months as one of the greatest medical achievements in human history.” He cites a study by the Commonwealth Fund that estimates that “more than three million lives were saved in the United States between December 2020 and November 2022 by COVID vaccines.” He bemoans the fact that “ultimately more than 50 million adult Americans declined the vaccines, even though they were widely available at no cost.” Most upsetting to him is that “(M)ore than 230,000 Americans died unnecessarily between June 2021 and March 2022, largely because misinformation caused them to turn away from what might have saved them in the midst of a dangerous pandemic” (citing a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation). He notes that “one’s political party was a strong predictor of resistance (to the vaccine),” as was religion, with his own group, white evangelical Christians, “the most resistant of all.” Hopefully these resistant groups didn’t take the advice of President Trump and drink bleach.
Many of us seem unwilling to ascertain fact, deriving our information by blindly accepting our social media contacts and from media that agrees with our politics. As Dr. Collins shows, in the extreme, reliance on these sources of information can result in death. When we vote and select our leaders, this type of reliance on untruths and unsubstantiated false facts can also be devastating, resulting in leadership and policies that affect all of us individually.
The president has the ability to direct the launch of a nuclear missile, but also formulates and attempts to put into action policies that affect all of us, governing how women will use their bodies to how the country will support our ideas of freedom and democracy, both nationally and around the world.
We all know how to find the truth (i.e., facts based on real evidence). It takes a little more work now that the internet and its derivations have proliferated. I suggest going to a variety of media across the political spectrum, especially respected ones with which you don’t politically agree. It may be a little uncomfortable, but the truth often is.
As for me, I don’t think that I will vote for someone who suggested that I drink bleach to cure a virulent disease and can’t seem to find the truth with two hands in a telephone booth.
