Politically speaking, we have all seen by now how quickly lies take root and keep growing, like some tree roots—some of which are more pervasive than others. With many tree roots and plant roots, trying to kill them takes patience and persistence. With gullible people, the same patience and persistence, only allows them room to keep spreading—choking out the life of all those around them until the truth—just doesn’t matter anymore.
Now some reading this might think—that’s not true. We can kill the roots of trees by digging them up or either cutting them up—removing them from the life source of the trunk, or we could poison the entire trunk until roots wither and die. But when we look at the roots of lies, the trunk is the political party—in this case—conservatives—who only want to make liberals look bad to other conservatives.
For years we’ve heard, “The Democrats want to take our guns!” Nothing could be further from the truth. Democrats have no desire to “take away anyone’s guns” we just want to protect the innocent from the foolish who either have no ability to control their behavior or lock up their weapons or they are fiercely determined to puff up their manhood with military style weapons that are designed to kill people, not defend. The arguments have been plenty and every time there is a shooting incident in which multiple people have been injured or killed, they are silent. The only voices heard are the Democrats, demanding common sense gun laws, to get guns out of the hands of people who are intrinsically evil. Why won’t the conservatives speak up (other than to utter, “thoughts and prayers”)? Their allegiance to the NRA keeps them silent and the donations coming into their bank accounts. So, until we find a way to “cut off the system that feeds them,” we’ll continue to have innocent people lose their lives because of the continuing spread of the lying roots.
During the 2016 election so many lies were told about Hillary Clinton that it would take writing a book to explain them all. But the lies people believed and spread which made no sense, were the most pervasive. They lied about her eating fetuses, holding children in a basement of a pizza parlor as part of a sex trafficking scheme, and her poor health. This essay is not intended to “re-litigate” that election, but to point out how quickly lies spread via gullible people who simply don’t want to know the truth. Perhaps, these “god-fearing folks didn’t read the scripture that states, “And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” And so, the fake news and lies, proved to be the death knell for Hillary Clinton’s election hopes—the source was not cut off soon enough.
So, let’s look at that source of lies and how their pervasiveness is yet impacting our political system—poisoning in reverse flow—from the roots to the exposed tree tops, promoting the truth. When an angry authoritarian blows his top because he lost an election and those in the same party, continuing feeding the gullible, soon the truth—though known by many, becomes a barrier to the party who wants to remain in power, no matter what and the lies are nurtured, promulgated by the right-wing media hosts who have no conscious and are certainly not “god-fearing.” The lies have prompted more lies and created more dissension between lawmakers who are now determined to make voting more difficult—especially for those who would not be voting for the lying roots, no matter how pervasive they become. It has yet to be determined, how these roots will die, and they will, because for every lying plot conceived out of sight, truth stands tall and visible, made known to all who are willing to hear the truth. The roots that lie, will curl and crumble, breaking into bits and pieces that will soon have no more life, nutrients—more lies—won’t feed them when the gullible (hopefully) wake up and see how they’ve been misled. They will stomp out the lies, burning the root network so they’ll never grow back.
The most pressing job every liberal has in this election cycle is to keep truth visible and constantly sustained and nurtured to combat the poisonous growth of lies that will lead to the death of our democracy. We must show the gullible, how the source of lies has misled them and give them reason to accept truth, over the lies. Now, for those who would rather believe the lies because the lies are more palpable than truth, there’s not much hope. However, no matter how difficult the task may seem, truth must be kept at the forefront of everything we do—repeating truth every time we hear the lies, until the nutritional system connected to the lies, is dead and no longer a danger to truth or our democracy.
maryhallrayford 