5. Impeachment Fact and Fiction
Ken Starr’s hypocritical attempt to defend President Trump at this week’s impeachment hearing was missing just one thing -- Starr’s admission that he was wrong 21 years ago to pursue abuse of power charges against President Clinton for lying about an extramarital affair, or that he is wrong now for opposing those same abuse of power charges against Trump for shaking down Ukraine to help him steal the next election. Sadly, Starr managed to be wrong on both occasions.
The ongoing Trump impeachment saga brings to mind Pulitzer Prize winning author Michiko Kakutani’s prescient and incisive book The Death of Truth published in 2018. Subtitled Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump, Kakutani correctly diagnoses the roots of our decaying social and political order and our current political impasse. She forcefully demonstrates why, in the words of reviewer David Grann, “we must rescue the truth before it is buried under a regime of lies.”
At a moment when it appears unlikely that Senate Republicans will muster the political courage to rescue the truth, America will have to fall back on its greatest resource to do so -- the American people. Those of us who are dismayed by this dark chapter in American history cling optimistically to the notion that the American people will come to the rescue by voting Trump out of office come November. I certainly hope so.
But what if the same kind of Russian collusion and interference that we witnessed in the 2016 election repeats itself in 2020? What if bad actors exploit social media and the internet even more voraciously this time around, spreading misinformation and disinformation faster than the Coronavirus? What if Americans become so distracted, so exhausted and so confused by an unrelenting stream of lies and obfuscation that they cease to resist?
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