Start with the Truth

"Do not despair … it is time to roll up our sleeves"

“Do not despair. This is not a time to throw up your hands, this is the time to roll up our sleeves”, Kamala Harris said in her concession speech.

When the majority of a great nation elects a person whose speech, behaviour, and actions are utterly abhorrent, this is a symptom of a serious disease. I bet that a couple of decades ago, in the age of printed press, before the invention of news feed on social media, such a paddler of blatant lies and insults, would not find a wider audience, let alone make it to the ballot, in no dream win the election.

There is never only one cause of a disaster, and politicians, sociologists and journalists try to find and weigh them all. There is, however, a cure we can start applying today, before all the political diagnoses are given. Starting from the closest circle of family and friends, coworkers and neighbours (of whom, statistically, more than half voted differently), encourage a healthy habit: never ever allow social media become the staple source of information. Read online papers, listen to the radio, and turn off, for good, the news feeds.

Don’t let the clown jumping at the bully’s side concoct the “news” mixture for you, because it is a poison which kills in a reader the sense of the truth.

For those who see the vulgar bully as a “strongman”, I can only cite a concise description of masculine traits in a brilliant essay by Tom Nichols, written over four years ago:

“The men I grew up with think of themselves as pretty tough guys, and most of them are. […] These are men whose fathers and grandfathers came from a culture that looks down upon lying, cheating, and bragging, especially about sex or courage.”¹

Look down upon lying, cheating, and bragging. For whom the bell tolls?

It is not a manly behaviour to incite an insurrection in the face of defeat. A person of integrity comes to terms with being defeated, and promises a peaceful transition of power - we had an example, a couple of days ago.

I don’t know, how the culture of virtues: truth, integrity, valour, could appeal to people so divided, but I believe that the first step is to restore these virtues in the discourse of everyday life, to counteract the culture—savagery rather—of inciting and propagating downright lies. Switch off the social media feed and encourage your neighbour to do the same.

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1. “Donald Trump, the Most Unmanly President” by Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, May 25, 2020
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/donald-trump-the-most-unmanly-president/612031/