As former U.S. ambassador to the UN Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts.
There is a lot of disinformation and outright lies being told today with little or no evidence to support claims. Unfortunately, a lot of people are buying into the misinformation without searching for the facts or truth.
As a recent example, many people bought into President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech. Although much of what he said was correct, he misspoke on a few issues.
He said he reduced the federal deficit, which was only partially correct. He failed to mention it was largely due to the emergency pandemic funding from the previous administration of President Donald Trump. He also left out context in discussing COVID-19 deaths, suggesting that far more deaths occurred during the Trump era, which was not the case, as CNN reported .
Another example is Sen. Bernie Sanders’ claim that 500,000 Americans go bankrupt every year from medical bills. He said it to push his agenda, but it was at least slightly misleading. His comments were based on a report that medical costs contribute to, without necessarily causing, 500,000 bankruptcies, as the Washington Post, among others, has pointed out .
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Limiting the stream of misinformation and getting to the facts is important. Republicans have stated that Democratic politicians and the mainstream media are constantly lying to the American people with no examples of such lies. “They are getting away with treasonous acts and total disregard for our constitution.” Again, no examples when they claim that. “Democrats are blind to the political persecution going on against their fellow Americans.” When Republicans say things like this, I assume they are referring to Trump, who has been indicted in several cases for breaking the law. Some of the indictments were issued by a grand jury made up of everyday citizens, not Democratic politicians. Trump was found liable for sexual assault and again for damaging a plaintiff’s reputation by his repeated attacks on her. This wasn’t the Democrats; it was the woman who was sexually assaulted by Trump. There are still a couple of state cases and a couple of federal cases which may or may not make it to trial. If they go to trial, he could be found guilty or innocent. That’s how the law and our criminal-justice system work.
Republicans have referred to Democrats as tyrants and globalists. I don’t see Democrats as oppressive and cruel. I see Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping as tyrants. America is a globalist country. If you look back at the end of World War II, America was magnanimous in what it did to rebuild Europe. It provided security from Russia for those countries that had been destroyed. The U.S. economically helped rebuild Europe, which has become our greatest ally.
NATO also was created to help nations provide security from Russia. The U.S. and its citizens have benefited greatly because of new markets for American products and reliable trading partners. That relationship created peace throughout Europe since the end of WWII. That is globalism, and the citizens of the U.S. and the free world are the beneficiaries.
One of NATO’s greatest champions was President Ronald Reagan. Trump looks up to strong men such as Putin, Xi, and Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, and has “encouraged Russia to attack any of the United States’ NATO allies for failing to meet their financial obligations. That would be a disaster for world peace.
Trump continues to preach that the 2020 election was stolen. He refuses to accept defeat, in spite of losing 60 lawsuits due to a lack of any evidence and numerous state audits that failed to turn up widespread election fraud or equipment malfunction. This has seriously damaged our democracy and people’s faith in our election process. Prior to 2016, the majority of Americans considered our elections to be safe and fair. That’s not true today, according to Pew Research .
Protecting our Constitution and rule of law is critical to protecting our democracy. As a reminder, it wasn’t Democrats who violated the Constitution and the Electoral Account Act by sending a separate set of fake electors from several states so Vice President Mike Pence, at the behest of Trump, could violate the Constitution and law by changing certain electors. Fortunately, Pence chose to follow the Constitution and the law. It wasn’t Democrats who stormed and broke into the Capitol at the behest of Trump, injuring several federal officers, doing significant damage, calling out to hang Pence, and putting our entire Congress at risk of physical harm in an effort to overthrow the election — all of which was in violation of the Constitution and the law.
If we want to save our democracy, we need to search for the facts and truth and become less accepting of disinformation.
One confession: I am not a Democrat.
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J. Doug Pruitt of Knife River is a writer and contributor to the News Tribune Opinion page.
The Trust Project
