OPINION:
So former President Donald Trump is the political equivalent of a mafia don, according to the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia. The southern border is secure. (The sight of thousands streaming across it each week is an optical illusion.)
Criminals are depraved because they’re deprived. And prosperity is just around the corner and over the rainbow with “Bidenomics.”
Why do so many swallow these absurdities whole, some contradicted by their senses, all by reality?
The problem lies in part with the cultural echo-chamber effect. The lies mouthed by progressive politicians are endlessly repeated by the mainstream media, academia, the entertainment industry and other engines of disinformation.
The failings of public education also play a part. Generations haven’t been taught to think critically, weigh the evidence, and seek alternatives to the drivel they are offered as revealed truth.
Welcome to the wonderful world of ”Whom are you going to believe: me, or your lying brain?”
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has spent the past two years assuring us that the border is shut tight. Republicans in Congress are so convinced that they want to impeach him.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that the number of immigrants living in the United States illegally increased by 2.3 million — 16% — under President Biden.
It’s reached the point where New York Mayor Eric Adams, once a proud proponent of sanctuary cities, now says: “We need to control the border. We need to call a state of emergency, and we need to properly fund this national crisis.”
In response to the hundreds of teens who went on a rampage near Chicago’s Millennium Park in April, Mayor Brandon Johnson warned against demonizing “young people who have been starved of opportunities.”
In the past week, young people who are hungry for a chance in life killed an Uber driver and father of three in Seattle, killed three on a basketball court in North Philadelphia and ransacked a Nordstrom store in Los Angeles, making off with an estimated $300,000 in merchandise.
Root cause-ism is alive and well on the left, which refuses to acknowledge the existence of evil — that some people inflict pain and suffering because they enjoy it and take what they want because it beats working.
In Massachusetts, a federal judge ruled a middle school could ban a student’s T-shirt with the slogan “there are only two genders.”
But the Supreme Court has repeatedly refused to recognize more than two genders. The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon, wrote in United States v. Virginia (1996): “Physical differences between men and women are enduring. The two sexes are not fungible.”
The “two sexes”? If she wore that on a T-shirt today, she’d be denied admission to some schools.
Sen. Mazie Hirono, Hawaii Democrat, blamed the Maui wildfire on climate change, a failure to recognize which is a “head-in-the-sand attitude,” she maintained.
We are assured that there is an overwhelming scientific consensus here. If so, it’s a consensus enforced by punishment meted out to scientists who dissent — loss of funding, refusal to have their papers published and being denied tenure.
“It’s a manufactured consensus,” says climate scientist Judith Curry, who used to be part of that consensus. Those who subscribe to climate dogma exaggerate the risk in the pursuit of “fame and fortune,” she charges.
Wednesday was the first anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, aka Bidenomics. In a speech marking the occasion, the president used his oft-repeated line, delivered in a whisper for effect, “Guess what? It’s working” — like a human-made super-virus that escaped a lab.
Since Mr. Biden became president, prices have increased by 16.6%. It’s costing the average family an additional $700 a month. Interest rates are the highest they’ve been in 22 years. If things get any better, we’ll be selling apples on street corners.
Mr. Biden is the lord of illusion. After half a century in Washington, he can tell you that Spam is porterhouse steak, and some will believe it.
Our withdrawal from Afghanistan was a success — apart from the 13 service members killed, billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment lost and thousands of allies left behind.
White supremacy is the greatest threat to our security.
He had no knowledge of his son’s business dealings.
That Mr. Biden is the most unpopular president in U.S. history at this point in his administration proves that snake oil salesmanship has its limits.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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