This is the battle of the new century, and it’s not going well for the good guys.
It feels like 1940, struggling to hold the beachheads in England and Dunkirk (but, as you’ll recall, the good guys won that one; the lesson being to never give up the good fight, no matter how dark the future looks).
Our country has been overrun with lies. Trump is a liar. Tucker Carlson and Fox News are liars, too. Joe Rogan invites liars onto his popular podcast, thereby giving their lies wide circulation. The election denialism that has engulfed the Republican Party is fueled by lies. The entire QAnon movement is based on a gigantic lie. And now, even Supreme Court justices are liars, too.
Let’s focus on the Supreme Court, because it’s such an important governing institution in our society; and also because it’s supposed to embody rationality, and uphold objective truth and unbiased fairness. Americans have a strong sense of fair play, which makes our highest court a cultural icon.
Here’s the problem: “The U.S. Supreme Court is rejecting reality to push far-right Christian fundamentalism, according to a new analysis published by The New York Times” (read story here).
Raw Story, my source for this piece, uses the Bremerton football coach as Exhibit A. In that case, Raw Story says “SCOTUS held that a public school employee could pressure students to participate in prayer.” My previous commentary, which drew on a Vox story, phrased this as “changing the facts to justify the decision” (details here). That’s not what you want any court doing.
Conservative anti-intellectualism isn’t new. What has changed is conservatives have seized control of the Supreme Court, and are corrupting the objectivity of the law.
There’s such a thing as objective truth. The Earth is not flat, it’s spherical; and it’s 4 billion years old, not 6,000 years old. Climate change is real, and is wreaking real-life havoc. Covid-19 is real, too, and has killed people who refused to get vaccinated, wear masks, or avoid crowds. Bleach enemas don’t prevent or cure it, no matter how fervently some people believe in them.
In our society, battle lines are being drawn between people who respect truth, and those driven by fantasies who are trying to suppress truth. Choosing sides should be easy. As the Bible says, “the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). Conversely, getting the facts wrong can have very unpleasant consequences.
Believing what’s true, rejecting what’s not true, and getting it right matters. Much of America’s historic greatness was built on that foundation. This is a fight we must win.