July 4, 2025
We are still a free society. Lies alone will not destroy this nation.
I live in a Republican area. Many of my friends voted for Donald Trump. They are not deplorables. They have not lost their minds. They are not Eric Hoffer’s, psychologically distressed, “True Believers.”
We overuse mental health descriptions to explain problems when naming a “condition is easier than finding a solution. Trump supporters do see the world differently from those who voted for Harris. That does not make them deficient either intellectually or emotionally. They are not following a leader blindly. They can think for themselves. They are not compensating for a lack of power or self-esteem.
Often, perhaps generally, we miss simple explanations when we are attracted to medical jargon. And we do like to feel superior to other people. We’re healthy and they’re not. The truth is more likely this: people form ideas from the information that see, hear and read. And we don’t all see, hear and read the same information.
From the beginning of the Republic, partisan leaders have known that when they control the information that people receive, they win elections.
And when they can they lie.
The result is this: that to the extent people live in information “silos,” they can be controlled by a political movement—as long as they can saturate that information with plausible lies. Their followers are “believers” only in the sense that like the rest of us they are making logical connections between the information they have to work with and how they evaluate the success or failure of political leaders. They are no “True Believers,” in the “God, Guns and Gays” mindless way.
Think about it. All of us are dependent upon news sources. We may think we read a little more widely than others, but we are not omniscient. Our own thinking depends upon the accuracy of our personal experience with “the news.”
So am I, or are you, any more accurately informed than those that follow the MAGA banner? Actually, we are. A lot better off, because our sources are less distorted by lies. There are deep biases, and many illusions in what information the left consumes. I don’t deny that. I believe it about myself. It’s just that there are a lot more lies circulating within the Donald Trump/MAGA silo.
It is hard to imagine anyone ever using lying as successfully as Donald Trump. If you aren’t exposed to contravening information, you can’t see them as lies. You may realize that he has a way of using some rather crude exaggerations. But we all expect that in politicians. Donald Trump’s false statements are not mere exaggerations. They are deliberately false. They are lies, with a little glitter and lipstick.
And since the silos that we are shepherded into in the modern world are well sealed and isolated, this matters more. Social media and cable news has constructed silos unmatched at any time in the past. And the result is an unprecedented challenge to a “of the people, by the people, and for the people” government.
We may have been close to this before, however. The 1800 Election was a watermark for the new Republic. It came at a time of intense partisan division. On this nearly 250th anniversary of our country, we might reflect on the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural address in 1801.
“… bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. … every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists….I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth.
“…, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government….Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people -- a mild and safe corrective of abuses … where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority; a well-disciplined militia; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.”
We live in different times. Jefferson would have had the integrity and insight to recognize this. Those of you who will wish to read the entire inaugural will realize that my editing serves to emphasize parts that I most fervently believe, as well as shortening the whole for the post. All of it is valuable as a statement of what Jefferson believed. I believe we have a right, that Jefferson would have approved, to subject even our most cherished beliefs to periodic examination, in what he would call “the light of reason.”
I return in the spirit of Jefferson to what I said at the beginning of this essay. We must fight, with fact and reason, the lies of our time. I have stood with Jefferson, since the days as a child when I placed this quotation of his on my bedroom wall: I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
When I see the cruelty of this government. When I see the corruption and self-interest and when I see the enormity of the lies, I say with all by heart and strength, “This is not my America, this is not my heritage, this is not Thomas Jefferson’s America, but it is now and always will be my country, a nation that will live again by the basic principles so clearly articulated by the Founding Generation, fought for at Gettysburg, sustained even during a century when great national power tempted us to betray our values, renewed across watershed struggles for an enlarged understanding of freedom and human rights, and carried in our hearts and minds into a century where the accumulation of nearly inconceivable wealth threatens to block parts of our democratic process and overturn the fundament rights enshrined in our Constitution.
We are still neither Federalists nor Republicans; we are still neither Democrats nor Republicans. We are Americans. We will again break open the Silos that challenge our survival. As we seek the truth, we will find our way home. Lies will not destroy our country.
There were parts of Jefferson's message I left out. Some of them would probably be interpreted as supporting the ideas of the 2025 document team. In context, considering the nature of very different times, perhaps not. I do think we need to take into account that Jefferson was born 282 years ago. If we go back another 282 years, the same distance from Jefferson's birthdate to our time, we find ourselves in the late 1400s, before Columbus "discovered" America. Only a few years after Gutenberg invented moveable type printing. We would be foolish to think that we understand everything Jefferson wrote in the same way he did, or that given his basic values and the knowledge we have accumulated since then, he would say the same things today.
Is it true there are good people on both sides? It doesn’t seem the lies even matter. The lies seem to act more like loyalty tests. When I call a lie into question, like “they aren’t eating dogs in Springfield”, the reply is almost always that they know, but those people are bad and need to get out of the country. It’s all about the feelings they get when thinking and talking about people who “don’t belong” here. These lies then, are merely about their dogma and identity in the white Christian nationalist movement. It’s the same for other lies.