Kiss

When Benjamin Franklin signed the Declaration of Independence he proclaimed, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” As Devin Patton similarly wrote a month ago, every American needs to now unite behind the American ideal that “all men are created equal.” His nonpartisan appeal correctly noted that “(i)f we cannot stop (our country’s current) descent into tribal warfare, we will become an uncivilized nation characterized by warring factions and disharmony.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Patton did not go on to say what we must first accomplish to return the U.S. to a healthy democracy.

Our democracy today is tarnished by both liberal and conservative online sites that profess to be reliable new sources while spouting lies and mischaracterizations that promote divisiveness and anger. If you are a liberal who disproportionately relies on Daily Kos, MSNBC or Facebook for your news, you welcome as truth lies and deceptive characterizations meant to inflame you. If you are a conservative who disproportionately relies on OAN, Newsmax, Fox, the Daily Caller or Facebook for your news, you welcome as truth lies and deceptive characterizations meant to inflame you, and also favor their intentionally omitted coverage of truths that inconveniently belie your political beliefs. Such so-called news sources are great only if you want flawed political beliefs reinforced and unchallenged at the expense of true facts and rational thought. Liberals and conservatives who rely on any of them too much have each chosen a world of delusion, hubris and anger over true and rational thought.

For those who believe that the above paragraph is wrong, perhaps the sharing of one truth will help you to see the light. Are you aware that Fox successfully defended a slander lawsuit against Tucker Carlson by convincing the court that “no reasonable person” would ever believe what Tucker Carlson says on his show? When liberals and conservatives finally reject such biased sources of supposed news, these sources will lose their power and Americans will once again have a shared understanding of many facts.

Mr. Patton’s appeal to the ideal that “all men are created equal,” however, demands more from each of us than just an insistence on truth and rational thought. It demands that states respect the importance of every citizen’s vote, because “all men are created equal” and because such universal respect of every vote is essential to any democracy. But since the last election, 19 Republican-controlled state legislatures have enacted 33 statutes to make it disproportionately more difficult for Democrats — and especially black and brown Democrats — to vote. And congressional Republicans strongly oppose a federal bill to bar voting discrimination against black and brown citizens. All this is supposedly justified by Donald Trump’s repeatedly disproven claims, rejected by over 60 courts, of widespread voter fraud in the last election. Sadly, many conservatives still believe DJT’s claim of winning an election he lost by over 7 million votes. Even sadder, many Republicans apparently reject America’s founding principle that all people, and all voters, are created equal.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Patton abandoned his attempt at nonpartisanship by condemning liberals for their supposed desire for mob rule. I admittedly have difficulty understanding how the extension of due process to Mr. Rittenhouse, and his nonguilty verdicts, were an example of mob rule. Seems like the January attack on our Capitol, to disrupt Congress’ counting of the electoral votes, hang Mike Pence and maybe Mitt Romney, and have losing candidate DJT declared president, might better illustrate attempted mob rule in the U.S. Sadly, his attempt to inflame conservative anger while ignoring inconvenient truths is precisely the sort of tactic that Mr. Patton condemned just one month ago.

I sincerely hope Mr. Patton will use his future columns to call out both Democratic and Republican lies and deceptions that many now accept as true, to help us return to a nation that esteems the American ideal and shares the same set of true facts.