You may have missed them, but Thomas L. Friedman’s commentaries published Nov. 16 and 30 in the Peninsula Daily News are well worth reading.
They deal with the impacts of accepting lying and the importance of “doing the hard-right thing.”
As Friedman points out, the act of lying is to break one of ten commandments “Thou shall not bear false
witness.”
Additionally, he notes “The war for truth is now the war to preserve our democracy. It is impossible to maintain a free society when leaders and news purveyors feel at liberty to spread lies without sanction.”
Trump has been allowed to lie, cheat, steal, bully and intimidate his way through life with his biggest and most consequential lie being the unsupported claim that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen from him.
It has been bizarre to watch Trump and his collaborators attack, threaten and intimidate Republican governors, Secretaries of State and election officials into trying to throw out the certified election results.
Fortunately, most of those being threatened have had the courage and integrity to uphold their constitutional duty to protect our democracy and to do what is right, which is something Trump has failed miserably to do.
What can each of us do to make a difference?
First, seek out the truth by looking at several sources of information, stop using social media platforms as a news source, don’t buy into the conspiracies, and maintain a high level of personal and social integrity.
Russ Mellon
Sequim