Alternate Facts

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie–deliberate, contrived and dishonest–but the myth–persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. “
― John F. Kennedy

The Los Angeles Times is one of the newspapers in my news feed bundle. I read an article from it today regarding the recent attack on John Pelosi. The way the article was written struck me as somewhat odd. It didn’t so much present the facts but instead recited facts to refute “alternative facts” that are now circulating the media sphere. I need to begin all of this by telling you that Congressman Pelosi is not one of my favorites in the House. She is too far left for me. (Although again in the interest of full disclosure, I have a hard time thinking of a member of Congress who is not too far left for me or too far right.) One of the other things I don’t like about Speaker Pelosi is that she is OLD. That might sound a little funny coming from ME, when of course I’m old too. What I don’t like about the Speaker’s “old” is not that she is 82, but that she has been in House since Shepp was a pup. I don’t like politicians who just go on and on and on. I saw a statistic the other day that half of the Senate is aged 65 or older. Doesn’t age bring wisdom? Ummmm yes, oftentimes, but not always. I just think that when we get into our later years so often we see the world in different ways that do NOT make us ideal for charting the course of the future. And if my memory serves me correctly, in 2018 Pelosi said that if elected Speaker for one more term, she would step aside in 2020. But 2020 came and went and she is still the Speaker. By the way my angst over over-extended tenure is bipartisan. I mean really, its time for Dianne Feinstein AND Charles Grassley to be gone. They are both 87.

Just because I have some issues with Mrs. Pelosi, I should still feel bad for John Pelosi shouldn’t I? Well, there was that thing about insider trading that he has been accused of, but who among us is perfect? Surely not me. But I was nonplussed by how the Times article was “playing defense” on its reporting of the facts. Why did they feel the need to do this? It is sad, but probably the reason they felt this need is that there are numerous “alternate facts” circulating. You have probably heard them. Mr. DePape was the homosexual lover of Mr. Pelosi and the attack on him was nothing more than a lovers’ spat. The police found both of them in their underwear. Mr. DePape lives with a known leftist and this is all nothing more than a publicity stunt to influence voters in the upcoming election. Based on reports from the San Francisco Police Department, there is not a shred of truth to any of this nonsense. Mr. DePape has admitted to detaining Mr. Pelosi and told investigators he was going to hold him until Mrs. Pelosi returned home. At that point he would be asking her questions and if she answered “wrong”, he would break her kneecaps. If this weren’t all so sad it would be funny. Investigators have gone to great lengths to show that Mr. DePape has been posting wing-nut information on his social media for months (there is an “alternate fact” that indicates that his posts were only made the day before the attach). If Mr. DePape were REALLY Mr. Pelosi’s lover, wouldn’t he be claiming that in his defense? I would guess that the Times debated about whether or not confronting the misinformation would just give it more credence.

I believe that our country has always had fringe actors. These would be the kind of folks that would dream up “alternative facts” like these. What we HAVEN’T HAD until the last few years, are supposedly main-stream politicians and other well-known people who will reinforce this kind of nonsense. No less than Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr. have re-tweeted the bogus claims. I read later that Musk “removed” his retweet. What the hell does that mean? Millions of people read it before he removed it. And other high-ranking Republicans are strangely quiet about this situation. There was a time when Ronald Reagan would have stood up and said “I don’t care if you are a Republican or a Democrat, intimidating and physically attacking a family member of a congressman is UNACCEPTABLE.” But the truly discouraging thing to me is that a sizable segment of our population, a sizable segment of our voters, buy it all as well.

You have read my words in prior editions of this blog. I love America and I think it’s the greatest country in the world. I think we are the shining beacon on the hill just like they say. But I am becoming increasingly more worried that our light is dimming. I’m not at all hopeful for the upcoming election. I think we are going to be shocked at some of the people who will be occupying positions of authority. We might begin all of that with our former Viking running back being elected to a SIX YEAR TERM as a US Senator from Georgia. I sometimes listen to KFAN, a local sports radio station here in the Twin Cities and to one of their afternoon hosts, Dan Barreiro. He occasionally reads an audacious news article in a segment he calls “The End of Society as we Know It”. If we can’t even agree that breaking into a private home and attacking an 82 year-old with a hammer is a bad thing, Barreiro might have lots more news reports to use for his segment.