What Is Happening to Truth?

“We have to break up families,” Trump claimed, because of “bad laws that the Democrats gave us,” reported CNN.

Trump knows in reality there is no such law and with his party in the majority, even if there was such, they could quickly change the law or the President could sign a resolution putting it on hold till changing could occur. Instead, it’s this administration’s decision to criminally prosecute all immigrants, some of which have merely approached the border and asked for asylum, then have had their children separated from them and placed into child concentration camps.

Just by itself this is a horror. Forcibly separating children from their mothers is really chilling, but then expecting us to believe that it is someone else’s fault is even worse. This fiction was compounded when Secretary Homeland Security, Kirsten Nielsen, tweeted, “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.” Given the facts of the matter both Trump and Nielsen’s statements are patently untruthful on their face.

Are there really people in our country who believe these things? Someone must buy this stuff or they wouldn’t keep saying them, right. Surely, if people quit believing in them, they would quit prevaricating simply because it was not working and they were not getting away with it.

Is our democracy, as Ex-CIA Director General Michael Hayden has written in his book The Assault on Intelligence, entering an era of “post-truth”, where the explanations offered are not based on data or fact. They are based on emotion, preferential feeling, tribe, loyalty or grievance. Is communication or decision making based on evidence, supported truth dead? Is this how the beginning of autocracy looks, sounds like and feels?

What has happened to the mechanisms to protect us against cruelty and outright lying? Are there any checks and balances? Eventually, it will be up to us, the electorate, right? But, doesn’t Congress have responsibility here? So where does Rob Wittman stand on these issues? Has he spoken out on separation and incarceration of immigrant children? Has he taken any stands on this administration’s many conflicts of interest or falsehoods? Or…is he just staying quiet…accepting them? Which brings up a big question, do we deserve more from our Congresspeople?