Truth should be our primary value. Without it, all others are moot.
The outspoken Russian novelist and dissident, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was arrested while serving in The Red Army, for criticizing Stalin in a letter to a friend. He was sentenced to eight years in multiple labor camps.
His famous Gulag Archipelago was written about his experiences and his reencounter with the Orthodox Christian faith in which he was raised which was the one thing he knew he could trust in his world of hardship and distrust.
After his release, he wrote numerous essays and novels where he continued to take on the Soviet system and besought its reform. His outspokenness finally got him exiled and he came to the U.S.
On the eve of his departure from Russia, he published an essay to the Russian people, Live Not by Lies. Herein, he called for Russian citizens to demand the truth from their government functionaries.
We, the people can learn from Solzhenitsyn and practice what he admonished the Russian people to do – live not by lies.
Every poll I see on trust in government overwhelmingly indicates most of us do not trust government or Congress. Why? They can’t be believed. They often seem to have their paid for agendas and not the people’s interest at heart.
Think about it. What did you believe about COVID, the lockdowns of mom-and-pop businesses, restaurants, churches, mask mandates and the draconian measures taken by state and national governments to protect us? Now that we have hindsight, was it an informed approach?
Now that we have past two years of COVID, more information is known about the ineffectiveness of masks. Quarantining of healthy citizens had never been done before. Controversary swirls, medical professionals and public health professionals disagree as do politicians.
The House oversight Committee is now investigating the Department of Justice and the FBI for hiding whistleblower documents on then Vice President Biden’s connection to a Ukrainian bribery scheme. Does it bother you that there is a five-year investigation of Hunter Biden’s business dealings with references to “the big guy” and no conclusions announced?
More facts are coming to light on the Clinton paid-for and now debunked Steele dossier and the FBI’s convenient press leaks to chosen journalistic participants, after they knew it was unsubstantiated.
Former President Trump is now under federal indictment under the Espionage Act for retaining and misusing classified documents from his presidency. We all recognize President Trump is a self-serving, unrepentant braggart and his own worst enemy. This makes his explanations hard to believe.
In light of the FBI’s questionable record, do you believe their account? What is true?
Some classified documents found in President Biden stash came from his Senate days and had to be taken from the secure-SCIF, which is a federal crime, but for him, it seems to be ignored.
Truth is hard to identify when we know statements in the press are politically directed and cover for political misdeeds.
What we read and hear from most press outlets has an agenda, outside of reporting the news. Many members of the fourth estate now swear allegiance to political agendas, instead of truth in reporting. News is often eschewed with political opinion. Loyalty of the press seems to be loyalty to the group you represent, not the news. Opinion is not news and it should be left out of news stories. News should be about facts, what is true.
Opinion has a purpose and while containing news should not be reported ass news. It helps us interpret and understand different views and hopefully think outside our mental and emotional box.
Why are we so willing to believe lies? It is out of the need to make sense and support what we perceive to be truth- what we already believe? Could it be spiritual deception?
There is a new breed of dissidents rising up in society. They are parents who want their children taught the truth and not the drivel of critical race theory and the revised history gospel called the 1619 Project. They are standing up at school board meetings and becoming vocal. They are opposing local governments and, in some instances, at the White House’s directive to the DOJ have been labeled domestic terrorists. What happened to the First Amendment and the land of free speech?
Classical liberalism is dying in the Western world. It is giving way to progressivism which opposes old, even liberal norms, questioning things as birth sex and the rights of transgender males who identify as female, so as to participate in sports against females. Males can’t become females and vice versa. This lie requires the participation of schools, the legal and political systems which must endorse and codify such to make it socially acceptable.
We are witnessing an attempt to raise a totalitarian ideology which accepts no reproach, in the name of social justice and human rights. While all of us have rights and deserve justice, this is a new and dangerous trend. It is a departure from rational thought.
Do reasonable people buy this ideology? I hope not. If you do, the truth is not in you. If we continue to believe lies like males can become females, then the reasonable world is lost. Solzhenitsyn learned this the hard way. Can we learn from him?
Tom Wright is a Santa Fe writer and investor in El Rito Media, LLC, owner of the Rio Grande SUN.