Dr. Arthur C. Donart, Ph. D. submitted this essay.
We have seen the shocking results of having a President continually lie to us and anyone else who would listen. Additionally, there is a whole group who call themselves journalists, newscasters, news analysts, talk radio show hosts, and commentators who constitute the echo chamber. Their job is to repeat the lies over and over again. They are hired and paid by the wealthy 1%, who own controlling stock in the corporations they work for. (Think Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.) How do we know this?
Just take a look at the list of corporations who announced that they would no longer fund President Donald Trump and his Senate and House allies, who kept repeating his lie about the election “that was stolen from him;” the one “he won by a landslide.”
Unfortunately, Trump is not the first President to lie to us. However, he is the most prolific liar we’ve had in office.
- I remember President Dwight Eisenhower being caught in a lie during the Cold War, when he denied we were flying spy planes over Russia. Then the Soviets showed the pictures of Francis Gary Powers and his downed U-2 spy plane. That was an embarrassment.
- I remember the vicious election contest between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. It was the Cold War. Nixon could not be trusted to tell the truth, but Kennedy was not completely guiltless. Kennedy accused the Eisenhower Administration of allowing a “missile gap,” giving the Soviets an advantage. That was not true, but, at the time, it was hard to refute. The result was stepping up the Arms Race and a missile crisis.
- President Lyndon Johnson listened to his Generals insist there was “light at the end of the tunnel.” That lie cost many lives and was then compounded by President Richard Nixon.
- Nixon lied about the United States bombing of Cambodia, after he secretly stalled peace negotiations.
This goes on and on. I think Jimmy Carter was the most honest President we have had in recent history.
Perhaps it is time that we wake up. We must quit placing a halo and wings on our candidate and horns and a pitchfork in the hands of the opposing candidate. The lies and echo chamber divide us as a Nation. This is not democracy.
The truth, the unvarnished truth, is essential to our ability to come together and solve our problems. We won’t get it, if we let lies go unpunished.