lies

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North Carolina’s Vile Political Ads


I am a new resident of North Carolina having moved here just a year and a half ago. We moved here from Massachusetts in no small part to escape New England’s harsh winters. Over the last several months, we have been bombarded with political ads from both Democrats and Republican. By and large, I have found all these ads to be very disingenuous. Democrats have run ads against a woman called Sandy Smith claiming court filings show her to be a dangerous person. They showed documents that were requests for restraining orders against her. I think if the restraining orders had been put in place, they would have shown such documents. This leads me to believe that no such order was ever given.

The Republicans have been particularly egregious in their ads with claims that are on their face false. A woman named Cheri Beasly, a judge on North Carolina’s Supreme Court, is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated. Her opponent is a Trump acolyte named Ted Budd. One of their ads claims that Beasly in her present office has allowed sex offenders to go free without any tracking. Behind this is a North Carolina law for lifetime ankle GPS monitoring of these offenders. What they fail to mention is why she refused such restrains and what she her decision actually was. I suspect that Beasly found the NC law to be in violation of the 6th which bars “cruel and unusual punishment.” I think it likely that she did order tracking on these offenders. They ads claim that Beasly is putting children in danger because of her decisions. Such fear mongering tactics rely upon the electorate to take them at face value and not question what is being said.

I have long said to people that they should not let other people do their thinking for them. The only outlet I know of which challenges political claims is the site factcheck.org. As an organization that is not aligned with any political party, the site takes on various claims made by politicians and their campaigns.

I am registered as an independent. There are things about each political party which causes me pain. But I cannot help but wonder how much of what is happening in North Carolina is happening in other states, particularly those states that are turning “purple” as the old solidly conservative North Carolina is. Someone, somewhere needs to come forward and speak the plain truth about the various lies and half-truths being foisted upon the American public and it needs to happen now.

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The Shame of the Republican Party


Has the “Party of Lincoln” now become the “Party of Trump?” It would seem so.

President Trump started last summer by saying that if he were not re-elected it would be because the election was stolen from him. The seeds of misinformation were sown. But Trump was doing what totalitarian leaders throughout history have done. They make up a story and then portray that story as the truth even when absolute facts show otherwise.

Trump is not the first horrible president we have had. The two presidents to follow Lincoln, Johnson and Grant each failed the country with, in Johnson’s case, a total inability to work with Congress and Grant’s failed efforts with reconstruction. Then there was Harding who, had he not died in office, would not only have been removed from office but have been jailed. He had the most corrupt administration of all time. The other one worthy of mention is John Quincy Adams who simply did not know what to do in the office he held but redeemed himself when he left the presidency and became one of the early 19th century’s most effective politicians.

Even before he was elected, Trump was deemed to be a narcissist. A true narcissist is incapable of admitting wrong doing. It gets worse when they also believe that every word which leaves their mouth is an absolute truth. This showed up in 2016 when he proclaimed how overwhelmingly he defeated Clinton when in fact he lost the popular vote. And then in 2020 he said he got the most votes any Republican candidate has ever gotten, which is true, but fails to recognize that his opponent received 7 million votes more than he did. Losing is not a word found in a narcissist lexicon.

During his four year in office Trump defined his base not by naming them but by appealing to them. This bases is the far right wing, ultra-conservatives and worse, neo-nazis, white nationalist and other fringe groups and militias who can find no problem with violence against state governments and the federal government. This played out against the governor of Michigan who Trump has earlier called upon these extremists to take back their state, a blatant call to arms. Then he wound up the January 6th crowd to march upon the Capitol knowing full well that this group was full of armed extremists.

There are 50 republican senators in the senate and only 5 of them appear to have to courage of conviction to call out Trump on the ugliness he brought upon our country. And the other 45? A few of them can be categorized as extremists themselves but the others cowardly cower in fear of retribution from Trump loyalists which could cause them their seat in congress. This is cowardly behavior beyond the pale. Their first duty is to the country and not to any single person, regardless of the virtual power they ostensibly have. If 35 of more republicans simply said that Trump’s behavior is counter to what is best for our nation then the far right wingers would be seen as what they are, the minority and an extreme minority as well. But they, the senators and congressmen, fail to realize that they are allowing the tail to wag the dog. They are complicite in allowing homegrown terrorists to continue unchecked. They are unworthy of the position of trust to which they were elected.

Where are your morals? Where is your courage? Where is your alligence to the oath of office you took? All seem to be missing and your character is forever blackened.

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Which Lie are You Telling Now?


Everyone has a conception of what a lie is.  It is being deceitful to someone when they ask you a question or when you are offering something which you state as being factual.  I think most people are pretty honest in their lives.  But there is also a part of us, a part I think which comes from upbringing, environment, and other factors which is so insidious that after a while it blurs the truth so badly that we cannot tell what is true or that we are lying.  Still another sort of lie is one I think few people ever even consider, denial.

The first sort of lie comes to us when we are children and uncomfortable subjects arise which are parents cannot find the courage to discuss.  Possibly chief among such lies is the discussion of sex.  As parents we do not know how to speak to our children about it, or we are not sure what we should say or how much we should say.  The other thing that runs in most families is the lack of discussion around things like alcoholism, drug abuse, mental health, and fear.

When I was young we had an alcoholic uncle living with us.  He had been abusive to my mother when she was younger and was abusive to my brother and I when he was living with us.  But he was never referred to as a drunk or an alcoholic but as some one who drank too much.  Then, some time after he died, my mother suffered a mental break down.  My brother, sister, and I were shipped off to relatives to live for a number of weeks until she was recovered.  I was an adult, maybe in my 40s, before I found out what had happened to her.  And then when I asked my mother about sex she pushed some foolish book off on me which told me nothing.  She was too afraid to speak to any of us about this subject.  That was quite common for others in my generation but I fear it still happens far too often.  These are examples, mostly, of denial and fear.  In defense of my mother there were extremely good reasons for her actions, or lack of them.

For the first four or five years of a child’s life, almost everything they learn comes from their parents, either from direct instruction or by parental example.  From then on children learn from their peers but always use their parent’s example as the sounding board of what is right and wrong, what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.  But any gaps in a child’s training, direction from his parents, he will fill in the gap with whatever seems right.  If parents actively avoid difficult discussions the child will grow up to do the same.  The lie in the case is the parent knows the truth but does not relate to the child, frequently justifying that action by saying the child is too young or does not need to know whatever.  Most of the time that just is not true.

I believe that as adults it is rare the day goes by that we are not confronted with an uncomfortable truth.  Most of the time those truths are relatively minor though they may be briefly psychologically painful.  The common human reaction is avoidance, and that is always wrong.  And too often that avoidance employs denial.  We think that if we deny that slightly uncomfortable truth, and then forget about it, it will be behind us never to be seen or heard from again.  I think the occasions when that actually happens is rare, if at all.  I believe that these minor uncomfortable truths come at us over and over again, slightly different, but basically the same.  The problem with denial of those small truths is that in either avoiding them, or denying them, we are teaching ourselves how to act or react in those situations.  It becomes second-nature.  We become so numb to our active denial of the truth that we come to believe the lie to be true.  From there we rationalize lying when we encounter even more uncomfortable truths we would rather not face.  Our denial becomes such an active and large part of our lives that we employ it without thinking.

For me, the most difficult truth to tell is one which puts me in an unflattering light.  But in considering such things, I have come to the conclusion that unlike the lie, telling that uncomfortable truth does not require that I defend the position whereas a lie always demands a defense.  And some of the most difficult positions to be in, and not defend, is when I know I own a portion of something I have done wrong but not the entire situation.  I want to say that this other person was complicit and so I don’t deserve all the blame.  The thing is, that does not matter.  If I own any part of a wrong, regardless of how small, I need to just own it and be done with it.  Trying to shift blame serves no good purpose.

My tack these days is to be absolutely honest about even the most minor of details.  For example, when someone asks me how I am doing, and I am not feeling at that well, my response will be along the lines of “I’ve been better.”  But I do not say “fine” when it simply is not true.  That is the most common thing people ask me which requires an honest answer and by being truthful there it helps me practice with the bigger and more important questions of truth.  Every now and then I will discover that something I have said is not quite fully truthful and upon such discovery I correct myself.  The truth is, my feelings have to take a back seat to my telling the truth.