165. Truth Telling

In my last one-minute blast I argued that the year-long sustained effort by mainstream journalists to tell the truth about the 2020 election, and to label Donald Trump’s lies lies at every opportunity, is making a difference. And I suggested that we do the same thing with Covid—that the mainstream press drop the big numbers and hospital staff losses, the hospitalizations per thousand and the deaths per thousand, and tell us the true stories of the unvaccinated, breakthrough cases, the afflicted health care workers, the nursing homes. That they go back to what they started on the streets of New York when this whole pandemic thing exploded. Do you remember the mobile frozen storage units brought in to house the dead?

 

There is the occasional whisper by a nurse or doctor that a dying patient wished he would have been vaccinated—and that others go to their deaths celebrating their freedom to choose. At least we’ve heard hints of that. Why aren’t we hearing the words and seeing the dying patient or the relative watching and waiting?

 

I want to hear from Washington State police trooper Robert LaMay’s wife or mother. LaMay was fired in October… “after failing to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by the deadline set for state employees by Gov. Jay Inslee. Three months later, he died from the virus.” Along with more than 300 other local, state, and federal law enforcers who passed with Covid in 2021. I’ve not heard from a dying cop or a surviving spouse.

 

Truth-telling does make a difference: On Friday former Vice-President Pence broke with the former president: “Trump was wrong,” he said, in thinking that he—Pence—could overturn the election results. 

 

Most tellingly, NYTimes columnist David Brooks said on Friday that Evangelical churches are reconsidering and reuniting. The few who boldly spoke against the election lie, the minister who broke early with Trump over his “grab” video, the few church leaders who admitted that sexual abuse occurred in Protestant as well as Catholic churches, the churches who reached across color lines, are no longer cowering. Ministers and parishioners are calling it liberating.

 

Meanwhile, what do we do with the mask mandate riots in Ottawa? The reported hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers who have given up? Getting past the headlines to truth-telling is hard work.