Imagine a pilot planning a flight from Turners Falls down to the Cape for a day at the beach. He looks out the window and it’s bright, clear and sunny. Like all responsible aviators, however, he contacts a Flight Weather Briefer (in this case, the old fashioned way; from a person, not a computer) to see what the weather conditions will be throughout the day, especially during the return flight home in the late afternoon. Much to his despair, the briefer tells him that a long line of thunderstorms running north and south from the Canadian border to Virginia will cross his route of flight with severe turbulence and damaging winds. Instead of heeding this advice, the pilot decides, “This is fake news. I’m going to fire this weather briefer and pretend it will be safe and sunny all day long.” Sure enough, on the way home, he flies into this thunder maelstrom which causes him to fatally crash the aircraft.
While conducting a self examination, a woman finds a small lump on her breast. The resulting x-ray indeed shows a mass that her doctor predicts will metastasize into Stage 4 cancer unless she immediately removes it. She doesn’t care for that prognosis. “The x-ray was rigged!” the woman says as she dismisses her doctor and consults some online quack who reassures her all is clear and healthy. Within a year, she is dead.
A Porsche sure is a swell thing to drive but its owner, Charlie Hardtop notices some strange noises one day while taking it out for a Sunday spin. His personal mechanic gives the vehicle a thorough inspection and notices that a poorly installed suspension system is about to fall off. Charlie is beside himself. How could his big, beautiful Porsche have such a catastrophic problem! “You must be lying,” he tells the mechanic, “You’re probably some woke liberal!” He fires the mechanic, gets back in the Porsche which, upon hitting a bump on the way home, spins out of control and hits a tree. So long, Charlie.
By now, you might have concluded that my not-so-subtle examples are in reference to Donald Trump’s recent firing of Erika McEntarfer, the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Her crimes were being a Biden appointee and presenting accurate figures of a monthly decline in employment. Trump falsely accused her of rigging the report for political purposes, an outright lie that had no evidence to back it up. As always, his sycophantic flatterers in Congress said not a peep in her defense but parroted the fake charges.
History is full of such examples of despots condemning the messenger and rewriting the message to suit their agenda. In 1937, the Soviet census included figures that showed a decline in population, caused in part by Stalin’s genocidal starvation of the Ukrainian people. He solved the problem by arresting the census takers and manipulating the figures for a new report. In the planning of Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” during the 1950s, some of his closest advisors voiced their concerns. Mao had them purged. As a result, anywhere between 15,000,000 to 50,000,000 Chinese died of disease or starvation. Hitler solved this problem handily. Any generals who told him disagreeable facts were shot.
On the morning of June 25, 1876, Colonel George Armstrong Custer espies trails of smoke from the gullies and ravines of southern Montana. This must be the Lakota-Cheyenne village he’s been hunting for. “Easy pickings,” he says aloud. His Crow scouts, however, warn him that it’s a much bigger encampment than it looks with thousands of battle-hardened fighters hidden from view. Custer scoffs, “You think you wretched Indians know more than me, a brilliant, unbeatable white man? Yours is false information! Begone!” He then divides the 7th Cavalry into three separate commands and charges headlong into the Little Bighorn valley. The rest is history.
I’m sure even the most fanatical MAGA cult member must secretly admit that ignoring facts can only lead to calamity, although they wouldn’t dare publicly challenge their master. Trump started distorting the truth from the get-go with his tantrum over his 2017 inauguration photos that showed the crowds much smaller than Obama’s. Such malarkey was amusing then. It’s not amusing now when our economy, national security, weather predicting and military personnel depend on actual facts, not fantasy. By denying facts, demonizing the fact finder and replacing them with lies and liars, Donald Trump puts all of us in danger. And that includes those who voted for him.
Daniel A. Brown lived in Franklin County for 44 years and now resides outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife, Lisa and dog, Cody.