The Obliteration of Truth

According to a Pew Research Center study, Americans rate “fake news” as a larger problem than racism, climate change, or terrorism. What is this fake news?  Is it CNN or Fox News?  Mr. Trump has said that CNN (along with MSNBC and the NY Times, even the FBI and the CIA) are engaged in fake news.  Last Sunday, Trump took swipes at Fox News.  Fox News he tweeted ““is now loading up with Democrats & even using Fake unsourced @nytimes as a ‘source’ of information.”  He even suggested just last week that his own Administration was “fake news” when it announced that the citizenship question would not be included on the 2020 census based on the Supreme Court’s ruling.  

In a speech at the VFW annual convention, Trump, in the midst of his usual anti-media rants, said “Stick with us.  Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news….What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

Homeland Security’s Inspector General, along with others say that the situation with migrant children at the border is a serious problem.  Mr. Trump says, “We’re doing a fantastic job, under the circumstances.”  

The obliteration of truth is happening right before our eyes and it isn’t the media doing the obliterating.  Trump is saying, has been saying, and will continue to say, that he (and his parrots) are telling the truth.  Anything you hear from anyone else who is not me, Trump seems to be saying, is not to be believed.  Don’t believe anyone else but me.  I alone have the truth. Anything you read or see, anything that doesn’t originate with me should be ignored and considered “fake news.”

Authoritarian regimes always begin by obliterating truth and they do it by discrediting the media.  Typically such governments seize control of the press so that only what “they” say is seen and heard by the people.  So, when Fox News is not “Trumpy enough for Trump” it, too, becomes fake news. 

“Hear this, foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear” the truth is being obliterated.