America is learning new tricks

To the Editor:

We're certainly learning new lessons in government. When your party loses an election, call the election “a fraud.” Then go to the courts claiming fraud without proof because there isn't any. The judge throws out the cases. Meanwhile, respected senators pretend the election is in question. It's surprising how malleable the truth is in the hands of senators afraid to stand up to a bully.

The idea is to get people to believe there is fraud when there isn't. And once you believe our elections can't be trusted, it sticks. Then you start questioning the idea of democracy. If you don't win the election it's a fraud; so let's try fraud.

And “the press is the enemy of the people.” First you make that claim, then you repeat it until people think it's true. Then people stop listening to trusted sources and go find ones that agree with them. A commonly held set of facts disappear. This has worked in several countries that traded democracy for autocracy. You can't keep an idea down if it makes you right when you're wrong.

And science has a habit of telling us what we don't want to know like “wear a mask or Americans will die.” We took that bet. A quarter million Americans later and you begin to appreciate being “dead wrong.” Meanwhile, we're doubling down.

If this is the way we handle COVID-19, we can't learn anything from California wildfires burning the state to the ground. So, we fire government scientists and put in people who know how to make money by ignoring global warming. Whatever is good for them is good for them. What's important is that they tell us, “Everything is fine.”

To bury the truth and undermine democracy, first stamp out the last embers of common sense.

Robert Carabas

Sonora