Choosing the Lie

When I was in public office, I had both supporters and detractors. There were those who stood with me and by me, and there were those who looked for any opportunity to attack. It was actually amazing to encounter what the late Rush Limbaugh called “low information voters”. Acting with their lack of understanding fully intact!

"I have never said that low-information voters are stupid. I just said they don't know what they think they know.” Limbaugh said. “They are prisoners to the media, which has dumbed them down… And they're all over the place."

There were times when it was comical.

My State Senate District encompassed Cherokee County which included beautiful Weiss Lake - the Crappy capital of the world. Weiss Lake had perpetual problems with upstream contaminants that floated down from the mills in Georgia. I worked often with state and local officials on issues related to Weiss Lake. Which leads me to an email I received – one which was also copied to members of the press. The message came from one of my local activists - I’ll just call him “Tom”.

 ‘Ol Tom, being opinionated and sure of himself, began to rip me into me, telling me I hadn’t done enough for Weiss Lake. He then related that he had recently been in Huntsville heard me on talk radio discussing a grant for a hockey team. In Tom’s view, which he related vociferously to the press, if I had enough time to help with a hockey team then I could make more time for Weiss Lake!

So, I smiled, cracked my knuckles, and commenced typing, ensuring that I copied all of the media folks (again). “Tom” I said. “You may not be aware but there are two of us in the state legislature named Phil Williams. The other guy is my good friend Phil Williams who serves in the House from Huntsville and I hear that he’s a big fan of hockey”. I commenced then to remind Tom (and the media) of all the things I had done to help Weiss Lake. Within minutes he wrote back with an apology, but my favorite moment came when one of the members of the media chimed in and wrote, “ain’t it funny what people don’t know that they don’t know.”

Too often we get just the opposite. To his credit Tom realized his error and recanted. But far too often folks stick with a storyline, tell us how wrong we are, and demand that we get on board. But when the facts come out, they play dumb and leave us to pick up the pieces.

And that my friends describes the cleanup underway right now in the wake of the greatest combined acts of political subterfuge ever committed on US soil. The Biden White House is now under investigation.

The storyline we were fed over and over was that Joe Biden was sharp as a tack, able to run rings around his staff, fully in command of the White House and running the free world with an authoritative hand.

But we could see it! We could plainly see the problems! “That was just a speech impediment; that was just ol’ Joe being ol’ Joe; you know how he is”. they said. Just a charming, witty, self-deprecating public servant - never mind how many times he literally fell down in public, or lost his train of thought, or took another vacation weekend, or called a lid on his day at 2:30.

We could see it, but were told not to see it.

A media that was complicit with the lies did all that it could do to provide air cover for infirmity writ large. It did not matter that he held the nuclear codes. It did not matter that he held sway over the largest government in the world. It did not matter that the economy suffered, or foreign policy was failing, military readiness was downgraded, or that supply chain disruptions were increasing. The story was that the emperor had new clothes and we were told to get on board.

It was an amazing thing to confidently know something so obvious and yet still watch the obfuscation continue. There was no shame as the White House and its media cohorts extolled the strength and stamina of the man that most of us knew could no longer be trusted with car keys.

Anyone who believed the lies did so at the denial of what their own eyes told them. They were low-information voters who were fed a lie, and yet had to have chosen the lie. The lie was what they needed. The lie was their validation.

And now the books are coming out. The tell-all exposés. Shameless. The circular firing squad just got an advance payment from the publishing house. Everyone knew what no one told that everyone lied about…. and now they publish.

But it was just announced that an investigation has begun into the inner workings of the Biden White House. An effort will be made to determine “whether certain individuals conspired to deceive the public about Biden’s mental state and unconstitutionally exercise the authorities and responsibilities of the President.”

We can only hope that the riches gained from the tell-all book sales are spent on legal fees defending indictments for the most egregious usurpation of elected authority in the history of the world.

The American people deserve to know who knew what, and when. Who was running our country? Who had the passcode to the autopen? Who decided to pardon and/or commute thousands of sentences? Who really shut down our energy production? Did Biden really sign those executive orders? Someone needs to be held to account.

It was not politics my friend. It was just a lie. A lie so bad you had to choose to believe it.