Once upon a time…

Shannon Bohrer

(10/2020) Experiencing the world pandemic, we have heard numerous stories of fake news and conspiracy theories. In May, Trump said the corona virus was created by the Chinese and they hid the fact that it was released. That conflicts with what our "very stable genius" said in February, that he trusted the Chinese. So which story is true? Are we supposed to choose the answer we like? The corona virus is serious, so you would think that our government would be serious about the response, and at a minimum give us consistent and scientific based facts.

The lack of truth that we often hear, is not new. Our "very stable genius" has exceed the 20,000 mark, for stating untruths, false facts and plain lies, in less than four years. Of course, the 20,000 marks does not include the untruths and lies he stated before he was inaugurated. The gas lighting started long before he was elected.

The divisiveness with misleading information and plain lies has existed for years. After all, we are talking about politics and neither side is without sin. However, the divisiveness escalated and exploded when President Obama was elected. No other president in the history of our country was questioned about his citizenship or his religion. Is it possible that there are many people in this country, that could not accept that fact that we elected and inaugurated a black man to the presidency?

On the day of Obama’s inauguration Senator Mitch McConnell said, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." When he publicly said those words, he set the stage for intensified partisan politics for the next eight years. In fairness, we already had partisan politics, but we entered a higher level, a level in which one party was intentionally trying to make the government fail. McConnel lived up to those words, blocking and obstructing everything Obama put forth.

Maybe other politicians have felt the same way McConnell did, but I had never witnessed an elected leader say so in public. You would think the single most important thing on Congress’s agenda back then would have been to fix the economy, since we were facing a possible depression. Before Obama took office, the country had lost over 4 million jobs and just 3 months into his presidency that number rose to 6.7 million. The unemployment rate was almost 8 percent and continued to rise to 10. President Obama inherited an economy in freefall and McConnell and the Republicans did everything to make him fail, thus impeding and hampering the recovery. They were not interested in helping you, they only wanted to see Obama fail.

After McConnell and his Republican colleagues made it okay to openly disrespect the Office of the President of The United States, everyone from elected officials, to private citizens, and of course Donald Trump, unleashed a barrage of disrespectful, hate filled insults, inappropriate racial comments and outright lies against Americas first black President. Before the election Trump started the fake birther theory. He continued after the inauguration and even accused Obama of creating terrorism, saying he was the founder of ISIS. It became the republican norm to be against anything Obama did.

When hurricane Sandy hit the east cost in 2010, it was caused over $70 billion dollars in damages. President Obama toured the damages in New Jersey and met with Governor Chris Christie. As the two met, they shook hands. Governor Christie, a republican, was vilified by the conservative media, for shaking hands with the president, not because he was the president, but because it was a black democratic president. If you were a republican when Obama was the president, it was considered a sin to interact with him.

False and misleading stories about Obama were often in the news. One network contributed to spreading the false claims and even created some. Many people wanted to believe it, so they never questioned the facts. However, just because you want to believe something does not make it true.

"When Putin invaded Ukraine, a Fox news said Obama needs to ‘get a backbone’ and he’s lost moral authority" All this while FOX marveled over Putin’s prowess as a true ‘leader’ and swooned about his supposed physical superiority over Obama." When Fox news praised a dictator, just to disparage our president, you know you are no longer listening to news, you are listening to propaganda. And that is just one example of Fox News’ coverage of Putin and Ukraine and how the Obama was a failure. When Putin invaded Georgia, Fox news never criticized Bush. "Notably absent from the 2008 Georgia coverage was relentless finger pointing and blaming the White House for the extreme actions of a foreign leader thousands of miles away."

Our "very stable genius" told us that when he took office the economy was in shambles, it was not. Remember, when President Obama took office, the economy was in a recession, but under his leadership, 11.5 million jobs were added and when he left office the economy was growing. In the last three years of President Obama’s term, the number of jobs added was 1.5 million greater than the number added during Trump’s first three years in office. Trumps economy, which he touts as the best ever actually ranks 6th, when compared with the last 10. President Clinton and President Obama’s economies both ranked higher.

During Obama’s first State of the Union Speech, Joe Wilson a Republican Congressman from South Carolina called the President a liar in front of the American people and the entire world. Wilson later apologized. Meanwhile, Trump has lied and made over 20,000 false claims in less than four years. His most often repeated lie, made over 360 times, is that the economy is the best in history. If the "very stable genius" were to make a speech in front of the entire congress and each false statement and lie where to be called out, each member of congress (all 535) would have to stand up 38 times just to name each one.

We all know people that lie or have lied. How many lies can a person put forth before one questions anything - they say?

"If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed. Tell a lie loud enough and long enough and people will believe it. All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach." - Adolph Hitler