Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   8/01/2023

Live not by lies, deception

“Live Not By Lies” is a 4-page (searchable) essay written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1974; his was the unique, necessary, enlightening and liberating perspective of a prominent dissident under Soviet tyranny. Perhaps only “Boomers” 1) have lived memories of the Cold War and the horrors of Communism in the U.S.S.R. and 2) were exposed to the truth of Communism’s failures, propped up by State lies at every turn, and Western journalism’s deceptions.

Said lies permeated not only the brutal tyranny in every country that succumbed to the false allure of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” but also minute aspects of daily life. Even small deviations from Party doctrine—a casual chuckle at a “leader’s” expense—could result in a lost job, lost respect, even lost freedom through imprisonment.

Solzhenitsyn sought to lay some of the burden on the willing participation of Soviet citizens and subjects in the charade perpetuating State propaganda: “But we lie to ourselves for assurance. And it is not they who are to blame for everything—we ourselves, only we.”

How apropos in a world where acceptance of, and belief in, some of the most egregious of falsehoods becomes a measure of one’s fitness for position and economic acceptance in society. Falsehoods are spread over “climate change,” pandemic mandates, illegal immigration, sex-change; and the diabolical imposition of economic decline while pretending that massive deficit spending, impoverishing inflation, and declining real wages are innocuous. “Move along; nothing to see.”

Thomas Jefferson said, “Almighty God hath created the mind free.” This inspired Christopher Flannery of the Claremont Institute, addressing Hillsdale College last October, to observe: “This freedom of the mind equips and therefore obliges us to seek the truth that we should be guided by—that all nobility, all that is worthwhile in life, depends on finding this truth and living by it; and failing to seek it with all our heart, mind, and soul is to let our lives slip through our fingers like water.”

In the 18+ years that editors have deemed this space worthy of a local conservative’s thoughts, I have yet to find assertions or positions taken here to be anything but accurate, truthful and principled. Criticisms of public figures derive from observable, provable actions and character flaws. Occasional corrections have timely been issued but did not derive from knowing misrepresentations. Of that, I attest.

When writers on this page bombastically demonize former President Donald Trump, I struggle to find a single truthful assertion; rather, these broadsides consist of lies, misrepresentations and inaccuracies—made all the worse for the thinly-veiled intent to deceive readers. All blame cannot reside in the writers; cable, network, major print outlets, and numerous online spewers of venomous propaganda provide a nearly seamless deluge of such anathema.

Writers’ culpability must be balanced with the unprecedented—legally, constitutionally despicable weaponization of—federal and state prosecution of political opponents. Like third-world despots—who believe “one man, one election, one time,” or “democracy is like a train, find your stop and get off”—it’s their form of “due process.”

I urge even the doubtful, among the 66 percent of local voters for Trump, to consider that where there is legal “smoke,” there are only smoke machines, not even sparks, let alone “fires” of perfidy or corruption. It is accurately called “law-fare”—warfare using prosecutors empowered by “rubber stamp” grand juries, in jurisdictions where a 98 percent anti-Trump jury-pool is assured.

Donald Trump has truthfully deemed this to be “election interference,” as these Democrat legal attack-dogs care not a whit that there is no substantive crime that rises to the level of seeking to imprison-till-death a former president—and current candidate doing well in the polls against Joe Biden. The voters are the only jury worthy of passing judgement on Trump’s fitness to earn another term.

No, these Soros-funded, or DOJ-appointed (spare me the “Trump appointed” nonsense as Delaware’s two hardline, leftist Senators Carper and Coons had approval of anyone appointed by then-President Trump), care not that their legal cases, while convincing juries, will fall apart on appeals, leaving a pile of legal ashes.

To prosecutors, the “process is the punishment,” while the deceptive tarnishing of candidate Trump’s image among persuadable voters will find them saying (like Senator Harry Reid said after his bald-faced lying that Mitt Romney “hadn’t paid taxes”): “Well, he lost, didn’t he?”

The partisan, anti-Trump/Republican news media (overwhelmingly Democrat-contributing)—functional stenographers for the Biden-crat party—can be counted on to treat Trump’s multiple indictments and trials in the same “objective” manner they applied to the Clinton-fabricated “Steele Dossier,” Russia-collusion hoax, and two impeachments: Guilty-never-proven-innocent and unfit to hold office.

I pray to God the 2024 voters send Trump back; he’s our only hope of cleaning out, root-and-branch, a corrupt and weaponized-against-patriots federal behemoth of agencies, and “law enforcement” perversion by FBI and DOJ leadership. He will help expose the lies and deceptions that have become entrenched in Washington’s powerful ruling class, and punish those deserving it for betraying their oaths to the Constitution and our citizens.