Just the lies ma’am, please

Sixty years ago, when I was a kid, there was a TV show called “Big Time Wrestling,” which was phony “wrestling” matches between doughy, comically bad actors delivering phony air blows to one another, sort of like Moe tormenting Curly. It was a form of entertainment for some people, and wasn’t taken seriously as a sport. In the years since, the industry has grown and become much more sophisticated, with very fit athletes performing convincing stunts, absorbing “fatal” blows and coming back for more, like Wile E. Coyote plummeting thousands of feet from a butte into a dry riverbed, dusting off and trying again.

Back then, at the checkout stands there was National Enquirer. One ’80s headline that stands out in my mind is “Demi Moore Gives Birth to Wolf Child,” with a ridiculous picture of some kid covered with fake hair.

Seeing this garbage, I briefly wondered: Who believes this stuff? Who buys it — literally and figuratively? Do they actually believe the “wrestling” is real; do they actually believe that Demi Moore bore this child?

My wonder was brief, back then, because “Big Time Wrestling” never threatened the life of my country. National Enquirer, as best I could tell, never affected the judgments of a large percentage of Americans. I was never challenged to imagine what life would be like if National Enquirer were the main source of “news” for tens of millions of people; if fake wrestling were the apex of “sports” for those same multitudes. Without really thinking about it, I just assumed that large numbers of Americans could not possibly be that stupid, or desperate for entertainment. But that was then.

P.T. Barnum’s business model was “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Lately, I wonder whether a sucker dies every minute too, leaving a static number of suckers; or whether, like the U.S. population generally, the suckers are multiplying and living longer, so their numbers and buying power are increasing, compared with the non-suckers. I am forced to conclude that the latter is true, unfortunately.

In recent years, the Untruth Business has exploded in size, and metastasized. It is not an exaggeration to say that there is a massive, sinister industry that is fervently determined to make Americans stupid. We’ve heard that large numbers of Americans believe that:

Americans never landed on the moon.

The Holocaust never happened.

Hillary Clinton ran a child pornography ring out of a pizza parlor.

Masks do not decrease the spread of disease. Surgeons who use them during surgery are liberal dopes, and their patients are weak.

The IRS is not interested in enforcing the tax laws. They just like to torture innocent Americans.

The Sandy Hook massacre was faked. The parents, heaving with grief, were acting.

“Professional” wrestling is real wrestling.

The United States Department of Justice is “coming after you,” whoever “you” refers to, even though you have not committed any crime. They’ll just come after you for fun, for no reason.

And last but not least, a whopping 25% of Americans believe that the FBI instigated the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. That’s right, the FBI.

I’ve written before about this “crisis of credulity” — an excessive willingness to believe things. How much more toxic lying can America ingest before her vital organs shut down? Can that be answered only via postmortem? Hopefully not.

The principal architects of the American Constitution deeply believed that an educated citizenry was crucial to the survival of the American experiment: crucial, not just advisable. They knew about tabloids. They knew about gossip. They knew about snake oil salesmen. They knew about conspiracies. They knew about demagogues and dictators. They were keenly conscious of the problem of stupidity.

Above all, they knew that government is impossible if opposing sides cannot agree on basic facts. They expected strong disagreement on policies, but not on what exists and what doesn’t exist.

Oh, to wave a wand and make every American, blue and red, an openminded, critical thinker, not just a chatty doll of self-serving, falsely based opinions and “beliefs.” But there is no such wand. There is only hard work.

And that hard work falls to each of us. No one gets a get-out-of-school-free card. Therefore:

Think for yourself.

Know the difference among a fact, an opinion and a belief. If you don’t know those differences, there are dozens of books, by very smart people, on that very topic.

Question all media’s versions of “facts.” Most media are in the exaggeration business.

Question all facts, red or blue, period.

Question opinions (especially). Do not fear disagreement.

Read source materials (like actual court opinions), not just “pundit” summaries that are often biased, incomplete and misleading.

Distrust social media of all kinds. Don’t confuse faith with knowledge. There is a reason we have the word “faith.” The belief that Donald Trump is some golfing, misogynistic, insult-hurling version of Moses is an article of faith, not knowledge.

Be receptive to other points of view that aren’t purposely false or hateful. For example, you may not be receptive to my hatred of reelecting Donald Trump.

Buy a bumper sticker that says “Get your facts straight.”

Forgive when possible (i.e., when repentance is present).

Ask yourself who benefits from people being stupid.

Finally, we can all start calling lying “lying.” “Conspiracy theory” is an awfully fancy term for “lying.” There’s nothing “theoretical” there. It’s just lying, and lying doesn’t deserve a fancy term.

Get your facts straight, and wipe yourself clean of the exploding pandemic of falsehood.