Your Own Facts – I Don’t Think So!

There’s spin and there’s lying. And there’s a difference between the two. You know it and I know it, but reporters and politicians don’t seem be acquainted with the difference. The worst thing is that the public has come to accept the lies as business as usual.

Well, I’m tired of liars not being confronted. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Yes, I’m going to talk about the elephant (and the donkey) in the room – politics.

I was listening to the political pundits on CNN the other night – they had a panel of “experts” and a moderator who acted as more of a pundit than a moderator. The Obama side had a couple of talking heads and so did Clinton. And just to round out the group there were three or four experts who claimed to be neutral. One pundit would make a statement, claiming it was a fact. One from the other side would claim that statement was untrue. Then they began talking over each other – the goal being to drown out the other and win the sound bite. The moderator did very little to redirect or focus the discussion.

The pundits weren’t giving opinions so much as they were asserting “facts” – contradictory facts. Back and forth it went. The moderator never called either pundit out; never made either justify or prove the statement they’d just made. And all “facts” could not be correct. Someone was lying. Not spinning. Lying.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being lied to. And I’m tired of the reporters, the politicians, and the pundits thinking that the American public is stupid. We’re not stupid, but sometimes we’ve got all we can handle just dealing with work, home, and family. We expect someone else to deal with the damn ringing phones. We expect our government to take care of the big problems, but more and more the government is the big problem: disaster responses, illegal immigration, the rationale(s) for the war in Iraq, airport security, the care of our wounded soldiers, voting machines, etc.

We know that just because someone – be it your child or the “would be” President – says something loudly and repeatedly doesn’t make it a fact. But often it’s just too much effort to do any research or object. It’s easier to just ignore the lie – and accept the liar. We’ve become complacent. We ignore the noise. At this point in America’s history, we’ve become used to lies; we don’t expect the truth, not from the government, and not from anyone running for office.

We need to wake up.. We need to write letters to the editor. We need to communicate our feelings to our legislators. We need to get involved. We need to answer that phone until we can get our government working the way it should be

And for heaven’s sake – don’t forget to vote in your local, state, and national elections. We need to elect smart, honest, hardworking men and women to start working on some of those big problems.

I know there have to be a few of those rare souls out there – somewhere.

Evelyn David