To Tell the Truth or Not

 

To Tell the Truth or Not

September 16, 2024

On July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania, someone took a shot at former president and presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. The bullet grazed Trump’s ear, drawing some blood. Trump was not further hurt. On September 15, 2024, near Trump’s home/resort/hiding place for stolen government documents in Florida called Mar-a Lago, a man was arrested who apparently intended to make another attempt to take Trump’s life. The right-wing media in this country, always more concerned with attacking people who actually care about people than with telling the truth, blame those people for provoking these assassination attempts. Is there any truth in their allegations? Because all killing is immoral, and because political assassinations are sensational violations of America’s political traditions, that is a question worth serious consideration even though it comes from people who rarely if ever deserve to be taken seriously.

It is true that yours truly and a great many other right-thinking people say things about Donald Trump that sound inflammatory. I have called him an American fascist many times on this blog and elsewhere. I and a great many others have called him a threat to American democracy. We have said that he incited the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol. We have called both that riot and Trump’s actions before and during it seditious. We have said that he encourages his followers to be violent. We have called him a compulsive liar. We have called him racist, a misogynist, a homophobe, and a xenophobe. We have said that he attacks immigrants the way Hitler attacked the Jews. We have called him a serial adulterer. We have called him a convicted felon and a man who has been found civilly liable for sexual assault. We have called him a fraudster. We have called him a conman. We have called him mentally unstable and totally unfit to be president. We have accused him of turning the once respectable Republican Party in to cult of personality. We have said that he is an embarrassment to the United States on the international scene. This list of Trump’s vices is nearly endless, and everything about him that I have said here is simply the factual truth.

Now, I suppose that it isn’t too surprising that a few mentally unstable people may think that all of Trump’s faults and the threat he is to our country and to the world add up to justification for assassinating him. I suppose one could conclude about Trump what Dietrich Bonhoeffer concluded about Adolf Hitler, namely, that though murder is always sinful, sometimes there is no other way to stop greater evil. So does that mean that those of us who know the truth about Donald Trump must stop speaking that truth?

No, it does not mean that at all. Those of us who know and tell the truth about Donald Trump are not responsible for the illegal, immoral acts of mentally disturbed people. Nor did we make Donald Trump who he is. He did that himself. We did not create the MAGA movement that Trump heads. He and a great many frightened, ignorant Americans and cynical politicians did that. We haven’t asked or encouraged anyone to commit any act of violence against Trump. The deranged people who have attempted to kill him reached that decision on their own.

The truth of the matter is simply this. Donald Trump is who he is, and American voters, as irresponsible as they can sometimes be, need to know who he is before they vote. They need to know the truth. That a very small number of people may respond to Trump with violence does not obviate the value and the need for the truth. Christian scripture says that it is the truth that shall make us free. John 8:32. When our country is faced with the mortal threat Trump poses to our democratic tradition and respect for the law, the truth is more important than ever.

Lies are abundant in our political atmosphere today, but they come from Trump not from those of us who oppose him. We cannot be silenced by those lies. We cannot and will not be silenced by the attempts of Trump and his acolytes to use the unsuccessful attempts on his life as an excuse for silencing us. Trump is who he is. The American people must know who he is. Spreading the truth about who he is can save our country from MAGA madness. Silence never will.

We are faced with an existential choice. We can tell the truth about Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, or we can let the deplorable acts of a couple of unstable individuals silence us. We can speak the truth, or we can be silent and hide the truth. As for me and my household, we will tell the truth. I pray that millions upon millions of other Americans who also know the truth will continue to speak it. Only their doing so can save our country. May it be so.