Politicians Have Been Lying to You, and Not Just About Voter Fraud
Like most Americans, I was saddened watching the attempted coup unfold in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.
Unfortunately, I was not surprised, shocked or stunned.
After all, the rioters were acting on the poisonous diet of lies they had been fed by President Donald Trump — lies that were repeated or never challenged by almost every Republican officeholder in the nation.
And as someone who covers the safety of our environment and the survival of Louisiana’s coastal zone, I’ve been reporting on a similar coup for more than four years now — the coup against scientific facts being waged by our president and his enablers in Congress and state houses across the nation.
Wednesday’s violence wasn’t the result of a small group of radicals. It was the inevitable destination of a road marked with flashing signposts erected by the political leaders of millions of Americans. For weeks these leaders told them they should deny the facts and believe the fictions about fraud, dead voters, stolen ballots and conspiracies led by a long-dead dictator, even those that had been proven false in courts. So on Jan. 6, they acted on those instructions.
When order was finally restored I wanted to scream as some of those leaders — such as Steve Scalise, Garret Graves, John Kennedy, Josh Hawley and Mitch McConnell — claimed they were saddened or shocked by the insurrection but added that Americans were “deeply troubled” by reports of “irregularities” in the election.
Of course, those reports were spread — in spite of the facts — by the very same people. It was like arsonists soaking a building with gas, then being shocked at the inferno when someone else lights a match.
The same leaders have been fueling the coup on the scientific facts about how and why our coast is sinking, crumbling and drowning.
Read the rest of the article at The Times-Picayune.
