Rocks and Hard Places

Our language contains several colorful adages that use dilemmas to describe being in a difficult situation: being between a rock and a hard place; between the devil and the deep blue sea; and, harking back to when the classics were included in education, between Scylla and Charybdis.

Here is a new one for our times--a dilemma that affects every American, strains the fabric of society, tests our resolve to be decent, and sets us unnecessarily against one another: we are between Trump and truth.

Fact-checking journalists and others who value the truth estimate that Trump has lied to the American people approximately 16,240 times since being elected president. That works out to slightly more than ten lies a day that are passing the presidential lips.

Of course the Liar-in-Chief denies every one, turning the blame to journalists who he claims lie about him--one of the behaviors we discussed in our recent series about Trump's mental state. He currently has active libel suits against the New York Times and The Washington Post, which he will not win, because as journalists say, "It's not libel if it's true."

Nonetheless, such cases are costly to defend. Trump doesn't mind losing them--his goal is either to bankrupt the defendant or to make it so expensive to tell the truth about him that the media will back off.

Trump has made it clear that one of his goals, if re-elected, is to "reform" the libel laws in favor of plaintiffs. And that my friends, would begin the erosion of the First Amendment rights of free speech and a free press.

Thence our dilemma. This man is our elected leader. But how can we, in any conscience, follow a leader who has no interest in our welfare, who lies to us as a matter of habit, who routinely disregards the Constitution he has sworn to uphold and defend, and whose energies are dedicated solely to being re-elected?

--Diogenes, 4/20/20