Remember when the world was locked down due to the Covid-19 pandemic? Remember how, within days of everybody staying inside, and nobody driving on the streets, the air became less polluted, and the beauty of our surroundings became more visible?

Though they were dangerous and stressful times, nature gave us moments to notice serenity. All we had to do – all we ever needed to do if we wanted to behold the beauty surrounding us – was stop muddying the air we breathe.

This video is called “Lies Go Away” It might make more sense after you read this article.

What about navigating our lives? Knowing things . . . discussing things . . . testing ideas . . feeling safe? Our paths to knowledge have been muddied, too. Especially on this world wide web of distractions, distortions, and deceptions. (Hmmm, the three D’s. That was an accident. I did not mean for a rare excursion into alliteration to sound so much like a gimmick.)

There was a time, not long ago, that social media provided venues to socialize and learn things about people, and share knowledge and thoughts with each other. Even then, for those of us who grew up playing outside with kids in the neighborhood, and going to each others’ houses for dinner and sleepovers, and enjoying community events like pot-luck picnics with three-legged races, social media left a lot – I mean A Lot – to be desired.

Distractions, Distortions, and Deceptions – Misinformation in a Nutshell

Has this ever happened to you?

You are reading a discussion about some important event, and you click on a link to read a relevant article. While the title of the article says, “Zelensky Sees Light In The Tunnel,”what you read is a story about a couple who travel to Latvia and meet a Ukrainian artist in a pub.

It’s an interesting narrative, so you read it until your eyes catch a glimpse of a photo of a traffic accident, and a headline that reads, “The Sad Story Of Brad Pitt’s Struggles With Addiction.” So you click on that picture and begin to read that story.

That story talks about a secret formula Hollywood stars know about that keeps them looking young and energetic. The article goes on to tell you about their exclusive access to the formula but you have to act fast because Big Pharma wants to take this site down any day now. Before you press an “Order” button, out of curiousity you go to Amazon and see the exact same product at half the cost, with reviews averaging between 1 and 2 stars.

Then it dawns on you, “That event I was reading about an hour ago was kind of important.”

As you back up and fail to find the original discussion about the important event, you come across an Associated Press article about the exact same important event. Reading the article, you realize that both participants in the social media discussion either got their facts wrong or purposely manipulated the facts to prove a point, or maybe the AP got it wrong.

After an hour of intellectually pursuing new knowledge, only to get distracted by deceptive advertising and winding up with not knowing anything for sure, you see another social media post that catches your eye, and you get started on your next hour of being misinformed.

Like Frogs In A Kettle

The proverbial frog in a kettle of warm water becomes immune to the fact that the water is slowly heating up. By the time the water is boiling the frog doesn’t feel a thing.

We have become so used to people talking at us, telling us to believe them, believe this or believe that, or believe both this and that at the same time, that we have come to accept untruths as normal.

Having lived outside the U.S. most of my working life, one day I wanted to see a normal, everyday national non-cable newscast on one of the original “Big 3” networks. I was not too disappointed the first 10 minutes or so, when they presented intelligent reporting at an investigative level that did a little more than scratch the surface. I thought – and I still think – the reporters were very adept at reporting stories without infusing them with their own political biases.

After about 10 minutes, though, the commercials got longer and news stories got shorter. Well before the end of the hour, 4 or 5 minutes of commecials would be interrupted by 45 seconds of news. The anchor actually seemed to apologize once – I thought I heard him say, “We’ll be back to the commercials right after this report from Sudan.”

This is what Americans have come to expect. And this is what Americans have come to accept. I cannot speak about other countries, but I think commercials have become a way of life in many corners of the globe. At least that is how it appears on the World Wide Web. And not just ads sharing information about products so consumers may make informed decisions. But silly, juvenile attempts at humor, and over-dramatic made-up stories posing as true stories, all of which are designed to distort the truth, distract us from the truth, and deceive us into buying products of questionable usefulness, as well as misinformation of no practical use.

Would We Be Better Off With The Truth?

We humans muddied our own air and water, without considering our planet’s indigenous inhabitants. When we locked ourselves down and put our polluting automobiles on pause, and we, ourselves, left the city streets alone and abandoned, it was not long before the original wildlife ventured back, albeit in trickles.

Animals instinctively trust each other to act according to their instincts. Their instincts do not account for humans’ propensities for deception and dishonesty. They may instinctively trust us to their own detriment.

We can say the same about ourselves. Immune to the distortions, deceptions, and other forms of untruths constantly polluting the pathways to our minds, we may just be trusting ourselves and each other to our own detriment.

In the U.S. there is one Constitution and two major political parties vying for power. Lying politicians is nothing new. From the very beginning of the country acting like a country, politicians stretched and distorted the truth to win elections and be put in positions of power.

So lying politicians is nothing new. What has changed, though, is the scale of dishonesty that has risen over the decades, specifically in the Republican party, and especially since the turn of this century. Coupled with a large and powerful cable news network that traffics almost exclusively in misinformation and biased propaganda, the Republican party has raised dishonesty to being a virtue, while truth is an enemy. Of course they don’t use the same language I use. What I call truth, they call fake news. What I call dishonesty, they call truth.

In civilian life, Donald Trump succeeded in making money in real estate development by lying, cheating, swindling contractors and bankers, and by bullying the people to whom he owed money. This is the man the Republicans made their candidate for president in 2016. Ignorant of U.S. history, ignorant of the Constitution he would sware an oath to defend, contemptuous of his predecessors, disdainful of men and women in the military, prejudiced against people who do not have the racial or religious or gender makeup or national origin of his ideal American, and with a temperament inconsistent with leadership of any kind, Donald Trump was the man Republicans chose to lead their party and lead the nation.

In his first term as president, in addition to his enormous failures in both foreign relations and domestic affairs, Donald Trump told an average of 20 lies a day, every day for four years. These were not little lies about stealing cookies. These were lies about topics of significance, and whose significance would be amplified if the lies were told by the president of the U.S., which they were.

As with other aspects of life, Americans became used to lies coming from the president. They would not expect lies at this scale to come from any other president, but they came to expect them from Trump, to the point where nothing Trump said could be taken as true.

Trump lost the presidential election in 2020. However, after inciting a violent insurrection, two impeachments in his first term, being held liable for sexual assault, and being convicted of 34 counts of fraud, Donald Trump once again became the Republican Party’s choice for president. Now his lies are not just an integral part of his character, he has made them policy. Whatever Donald Trump says is, by policy, held as fact by those around him, including his press secretary, who repeats his lies for everyone to hear.

Since Trump has taken office for the second time, his policies, backed by his lies, have created turmoil and dissent even among those who voted for him. Americans, on the whole, once they understand what tariffs are, do not support them. Americans, on the whole, are against mass deportation without due process of law. Americans, on the whole, do not want a dictator or anything like the authoritarian governments that Trump admires. Americans, on the whole, are very against the president unilaterally ordering the military to do an act of war which could potentially get the whole country dragged into another long, protracted and expensive war.

Where are the lies taking us?I’d be lying if I said I knew. But it’s something I’ve been thinking about since 2016. I don’t think a constant diet of lies brings us near to where we prefer to be.

I tried an experiment: After the November, 2024 election, I turned everything off. Any website or social media platform where I might possibly see a discussion about Trump, I stayed away from it. No night time comedians, not even Saturday Night Live, no cable news station whatsoever. No articles from online magazines. And very selective reading in online newspapers and news sources.

You know what? In a matter of a week or two, “they don’t own me.” Being free of seeing his image, or the images of his supporters – being free of hearing that voice, or hearing what he says from any other voice – or from seeing what he tweets or posts or what his followers tweet and post – it brought a serenity I had forgotten all about. I could enjoy a sunset at the beach for what it truly was – a natural spectacle free from man-made pollutants.

I won’t give you any more examples. You won’t understand until you try the experiment for yourself. All I can say is once I shut off Trump and all the deception and misinformation that comes with him, it was almost as if I could physically sense all the layers of lies lifting up and disappearing, leaving behind only that which is not untrue. It may be boring for someone else, but for me being mellow was invigorating.

So Would We Be Better Off With The Truth? I don’t know. All I know is as a world we are not doing so well with all the lies. The only way to know if we’re better off without them is to:

Give Truth A Chance

Thanks for reading.

Coming Soon!