Right And Wrong And Ignorance And Deceit

We often hear that the deep divide in this country is due to partisan politics. But what drives partisan politics is the loss of the simple concept of right and wrong plus a great deal of ignorance and deceit. It actually started during the Clinton administration. According to Bill Clinton, lying was only wrong for other people. For him it depended “on what the meaning of the word 'is' is.” And then it spread to Congress. Prior to Clinton, when Democrats decided to impeach Richard Nixon for covering up Watergate, the Republican leadership told Nixon that what he had done was wrong and that they wouldn't support him. Consequently, he resigned. Clinton committed perjury, a felony. That had already been proven and he lost his law license over it. But when he was impeached he decided the law didn't apply to him, only to other people. Senate Democrats agreed. In his trial, every single Democrat chose partisanship over right and wrong and voted not guilty. 

Now it's everywhere. Worst of all the news media. It even sneaks into this publication. In the November, 2016, issue there was a piece that said that after the election was over we needed to “forget about campaigning and making political points” and unite behind the new president. Of course that was just repeating a Democrat talking point when all the polls said that Hillary Clinton was going to win the election. After she lost their talking point became “resist” and the author of the piece in this publication immediately fell right into line. Only a sanctimonious hypocrite doesn't understand how wrong it is to espouse what's morally right and then do the opposite.

More recently, there was a piece in this publication calling for the filibuster to be eliminated, which is the current Democrat talking point. Yet, in July, 2017, when Trump asked McConnell (who declined) to eliminate the filibuster to make it easier to get his legislation passed, there was Democrat outrage about how wrong that would be. If it was wrong in 2017, it's just as wrong now. 

The pieces I mentioned were opinions, but opinions shouldn't be excused when they ignore right and wrong. But far worse is what's supposed to be factual news that isn't. My favorite example is the Washington Post's database of 30,573 Trump lies. In it, the Post said close to 500 of those lies were Trump saying he created the greatest economy this country has ever had. The Post said that was a lie because there were other times when the economy was growing faster as a percentage of GDP. But in reality an economy is commonly measured by the size of GDP, not growth, and the greatest GDP this country ever had was during Trump's administration. Besides, the greater the GDP becomes the smaller the growth number will be when taken as a percentage, and when the Post compares economies they, like everyone else, do it based on the size of GDP. 

The Post also said Trump lied almost as many times when he said his tax cuts were the largest in history. The Post claimed that was a lie because they weren't the largest when taken as a percentage of GDP. That's like saying it's a lie to say 2 is greater than 1 because sometimes 2 can be a negative number. 

That's just two of many examples from the Post database. Of course, it's not like Trump never told a lie. But in tracking down the so-called lies, I can't find that he told any more than any other politician. But to this day the first thing that comes up in a discussion about Trump is the thousands of lies he told. I always wonder whether it's due to deceit or ignorance. Knowingly repeating a lie is deceit; not knowing it's a lie is ignorance. In this particular case I suspect it's deceit on the part of the Post and ignorance on the part of the people blindly believing what they want to be true because of their dislike for Trump. The sad fact is there were more than enough reasons to dislike Trump without resorting to lies. But regardless of the reason, unless the deceit and ignorance stops and this country regains a sense of right and wrong we're doomed to becoming more and more divided until what happened on January 6 becomes a common occurrence.

Emmalee Luna

Emmalee is a member of Generation Z and a student of history who believes the prospects for the country she is inheriting are dim unless we all start being more honest with each other and less partisan.

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Volume 13, Issue 7, Posted 8:43 AM, 07.01.2021