In a short time, 2018 will be over. Can’t say that I will miss it much.
For the entire year, I have been working hard at limiting my media consumption, in an effort to stay off anti-depressant medications, acid reflux medications, tension headache medications and single-malt Scotch whiskey medications. As a life-long, nosey — almost obsessed — consumer of news, I find rehabilitation is not easy.
Prior to the arrival of Donald J. Trump at the head of a caravan of neo-this-and-that alternative reality stars — backed by his administration’s own cable network to verify the truth of each day’s Presidential tweets — the morning news was only upsetting now and then. But as the Trump caravan gradually approached the border between ignorance and evil, I began to question my life-long consumption habits.
As recently as 2017, I read most of the major news each morning in four different newspapers, checked in with a couple of online news sites I have found to provide balanced reports (chief among them the BBC and NPR) and have let my TV run in the background with news shows from an Indianapolis channel. Meanwhile, my smartphone beeped and dinged throughout the day every time a politician belched.
All of this over-consumption went on until about July when I realized one morning — while I was wiping my chin with a piece of peanut butter toast — that breakfast had been a paper napkin.
Intelligent, informed, patriotic and kind-hearted Americans from the far left to the far right to the wobbly middle can legitimately debate political perspectives — and they should. Not agreeing on the best ways to run the national economy, interact with foreign governments, secure the public safety, promote the public welfare, support impartial justice and guarantee equal rights is good. This debate and the resulting governmental “cha-cha” of two steps forward and one step back is what representative democracies call progress.
But, in order to carry on that vital debate, a government such as ours must have a reverence for the pursuit of truth and a set of commonly accepted, objective facts on which to push us toward that truth.
Most American presidents in my lifetime have told brazen lies that have cheapened our values, injured our democracy and weakened our national interests. While Richard Nixon stands out as the ”poster boy” for presidential lying, Bill Clinton holds the record for being able to keep a straight and innocent face while claiming no sexual involvement with Monica Lewinsky. John F. Kennedy secretly started the Vietnam war while bed hopping around the country with various women. Lyndon Johnson lied about a naval attack by the North Vietnamese on an American ship in order to escalate the war. George W. Bush pushed the United States into the second Gulf War behind fabricated reports of “weapons of mass destruction.”
As far as I can determine, however, none of these presidents — or any other president — can come close to matching Donald J. Trump not only in disregarding the truth, but also in convincing a large number of citizens that facts are his personal Play-Doh to be molded, changed, manipulated or tossed aside on the basis of his daily whims or personal needs.
According to The Washington Post Fact Checker, our President has made more than 5,000 false or misleading claims of significant importance since he was sworn into office in January 2017.
The most frustrating and depressing part of this national theater of the absurd is the damage the lies are doing to our most fundamental institutions — rule of law, the role of our military, the role of the press and the governmental division of powers.
I know some love the reality show that has become our national government. And I have longtime friends with otherwise good values who tell me they believe in most of President Trump’s policies, so they are willing to give him a pass on his self-centered morals and so-called “alternative facts.”
Call me old-fashioned, but I just can’t go there with my logic or my values. So, to keep from eating my breakfast napkin, wiping my chin with my morning toast and going on heavy-duty medications, I must continue to regulate my media consumption.
As the New Year begins, I encourage you to consume enough news to keep informed, but not enough to turn you into a zombie staggering through each day in a media daze — whether the lies and lunacy are coming from your right or your left or from that sad depression in the middle.
Bud Herron is a retired editor and newspaper publisher who lives in Columbus. He served as publisher of The Republic from 1998 to 2007. His weekly column appears on the Opinion page each Sunday. Contact him at editorial@therepublic.com. Send comments to editorial@therepublic.com.
