FIGHT THE LIES!

 Knowing what I do of human nature, I should not expect this post to be popular.
Lies.
The whole right-wing noise machine and fascism now incipient here and flourishing in other countries is based on lies.
Sometimes those in the center or on the left get caught up in lies too, but there's a world of difference between getting temporarily caught up in lies and basing one's whole life upon them. Can I get an amen somewhere from someone?
Most of those on the Left (except those who have become Islamist stooges) and in the center at least try to discern truth and live by it. From my own experience, the most consistently reliable way to do this is through a relationship with God, or the Higher Power or whatever inadequate words language provides you prefer to use, through whatever figure you find most helpful. I happen to believe that is Yeshua HaMeshiach, better known as Jesus the Christ. But that's just me; I'm not here to proselytize you but just to give you an idea whence I come.
And since at least 1980 (and very likely well before that) too many of my fellow citizens have sought lies which they feel comfort them and reinforce that wonderful feeling of being superior to other beings with any number of legs from two to thousands (millipedes).
The late Eric Hoffer, one of my allltime favorite philosophers, wrote in his book Before The Sabbath, that he thought that America was the worst place for alibis to survive. Then again, he wrote that in 1975, when more Americans seemed interested in the truth. I shudder to think what he must feel now if he's looking down on us!
Now, we are faced with the need to fight an ongoing civil war against an ongoing attempted coup by the forces fed by lies and who project that unenviable human trait onto all of us. They are funded by a desperate fossil-fuel industry which knows itself to be a dinosaur and sees the meteor hurtling down towards them. Their message is spread by Faux News and heretical 'evangelicals' who preach more white male supremacy than anything from the Gospel and a nationalism overlaid with egregious and blasphemous heresy masquerading as 'Christian evangelism' but which is only James Crow, Esq. aka Jim Crow 2.0. The latest attempt by them to seize power and kill American democracy has just come in Georgia. It's been all over the news so, if you don't know about it yet, what the blank are you doing reading this?
Now and again, my wife weeps how she cannot stand to live in a country so eaten up with hatred (mostly white males hating women, people of color and LGBTQs) as ours sometimes seems to be. What infuriates me and makes me think of shaking my country's dust off my feet and, once out, turning and spitting over the border, is lies. Those who live by lies to the injury of others who, for whatever reason, can't do much about it by themselves and, thus, need to organize and educate themselves as such organizing proceeds so that they don't fall for lies spread by those who live by them. Such as the lie that more freedom for you means less freedom for me. That's only true if I value being able to put you down and stomp you into the ground. Otherwise, more freedom and/or security for you also means more freedom and/or security for me! This is something I understand to be a part of God's message: more for the lowly doesn't have to mean less for those high up--unless something in them values being able to look down their fine noses with sneers!
So, at least right here, right now, it's up to us. Will we look for the truth we need and test everything which claims to be true? Or will we cling to comforting lies such as that we're better than all others because our skins are paler? And that we earned everything we have without any help from anyone? Watch those two words, fellow citizens. They're quite a bit bigger than you may realize.
If you choose the truth, then you need to do whatever you can to ensure that everyone really does have an equal chance. An equal chance to vote, for starters. Don't sit still in the face of any attempts to make it harder for anyone to vote--students, poor people, people of color--than it is for those who are well-off and, usually, white. Make what the late lamented John Lewis called 'good trouble' and don't stop doing so until and unless ALL attempts to rig elections stop. And keep snooping to make sure the fascists are back under their rocks where they belong!