What is the absolute best way to tell a lie? Take a truth and twist it until it bleeds. Repeat as necessary, until other people start repeating the twist, as the truth. When the twist is accepted as common knowledge, you win. Even if the truth just gets to be in doubt, you still win.
Let us look at the letter to the editor titled “Fear” in the March 8th edition. A recent presidential candidate was said to have placed the people who share the writer’s admirable work ethic into a “Basket of Deplorables.”
I went looking for the twist. A google search led to politifact.com where I found the actual quote and its context. No mention had been made of anybody’s profession. Zero. Offensive, hateful, and mean-spirited rhetoric as well as racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and Islamaphobic prejudice and paranoia were mentioned as being deplorable.
In the current political climate of hyper partisanship, our very democracy demands a careful vigilance of twisted truths and alternative facts.
Charles Mabbott
Darby