It is not astounding that a member of the House of Representatives, the Peoples House, would advance a silly, superficial claim that, by some secret means, the government controls the weather.
But it is beyond reason that the government then uses the weather to punish Southern states that vote Republican with hurricanes. Credit Georgia Rep. Majorie Greene for that disgusting and blatantly false claim.
It is not shocking that politicians would lie during their campaign to win an election, but it is damning when they lie to harm their own constituents with claims they flatly admit to being lies, as Senator and Republican VP candidate Vance, and ex-president Trump have done in Springfield.
It is beyond disturbing that an ex-president, who once diverted FEMA funds to build a wall on the southern border, and who therefore knows of these things, would claim FEMA is broke, having spent all its monies on illegal immigrants, knowing the claim is simply a damaging lie.
But then, this is the same group of folks who, laughably, tried to argue in a debate that Donald Trump tried to “save” Obamacare when, in widely known fact, he did just the opposite.
And, as if history and fact were to be disregarded altogether, it is nothing less than a mockery of truth to claim that Donald Trump participated in a peaceful transfer of power (See JD Vance in debate) when, in fact, he sent an armed army to stop the certification of the 2020 election, an attack that killed four Capitol policemen and was premised on a baseless claim of election fraud.
But none of these depraved actions, all designed to undermine trust in the institutions of government overall, could be effective were it not for those who willfully grant any degree of credence to fictions we all know to be false both on their surface and in their intent.
Sadly, there is no longer a single elected Republican who dares say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, even though all of us, Republican and Democrat alike, know that simple truth.
And that failure, the open knowledge that the Big Lie is now sacrosanct to all Republicans, both undermines how the people prosper within the constraints of a working democracy, a practicing republic, while advancing the risk to our very form of governing and living together.
We cannot thrive as a nation so long as the big lies, all of them taken together, find resonance among so many of the people. In words sometimes attributed to Fredrick Nietzsche, “How can those who live in light of day possibly comprehend the depths of night?”
How can we, a society built upon the foundation of trust in truth and knowledge, possibly endure the outrageous assault now underway by an entire political party and its leader, a man dedicated to undermining all of our values?
More fundamentally, so long as so many of our people welcome and foster the lies, knowing them to be simply untrue and caring not for the risk to democracy they pose, there can be no certainty that this great experiment, this American exceptionalism, can or will continue.
Will the November election be a turning point away from embracing the willful submission of truth to falsehood?
Or will it instead be the penultimate surrender to the forces that will undermine all that has made this nation great?
Ultimately, you, the voter, will make that decision: whether our children will live in a free society with a free press and a trusted form of government or whether those who live in the light of day will be forced to find the depths of darkness that are so nearby us all.