The most striking thing about the gusher of lies told over the past four years by the Biden administration and other ruling elites is the disdain the liars have shown for the American people.
The whoppers were – and are – easy to spot and impossible to defend.
Just ask people in New Jersey and other states who have seen thousands of mysterious drones. They’ve been told by the government that their eyes are deceiving them, that the drones are really small airplanes, cloud formations, or even stars.
And some of them are. But thousands are not.
On Dec. 13, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas did some more of his gaslighting. The Mr. Magoo of the Biden administration, to whom millions of illegal aliens pouring over the border are invisible, was asked about the drones on CNN.
“We haven’t seen anything unusual,” he said, adding, “People can go into a convenience store and buy a small drone.” A couple of days later, Mr. Magoo turned into Captain Obvious, finally admitting, “There’s no question that people are seeing drones.”
Some of the low-flying UFOs are the size of small trucks and have been flying over sensitive military areas such as Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio and the U.S. Army’s Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle in New Jersey.
You’d think that Homeland Security would do something about it. Perhaps they could play Bobby McFerrin’s song, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” when they put callers on hold.
This dishonest evasiveness about drones is right up there with the Russian collusion hoax, Hunter Biden’s falsely characterized laptop, election irregularities in 2020, the extent of ruinous inflation, lies told about former President Donald Trump during the Jan. 6 show trial, and the many falsehoods fed to the public about the COVID-19 pandemic.
The most consequential lie was covering up President Joe Biden’s mental deterioration since 2020. His staff said he was as sharp as a tack and hid him from view. The world’s bad actors took notice and gained ground.
In all these deceptions, the media have played a central role.
The COVID-19 pandemic unleashed a spectacular series of shifting lies based on the notion that only the government knows best. Anyone dissenting was a science denier or perhaps a witch doctor.
That’s essentially what they called Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University health researcher who helped author the accurate, Covid-myth busting Great Barrington Declaration. In one of the more delicious turnabouts, he has been named by President-elect Trump as the next director of the National Institutes of Health.
The COVID lies began with China, which denied in late 2019 that there was any epidemic, a stance echoed by the World Health Organization. They even initially reported that the virus could not be transmitted between humans.
We were told it came from bats in a market, not the obvious source – the Chinese military’s virus-manipulating laboratory in Wuhan.
This was followed by forced masking, six-foot distancing (later proved worthless), school shutdowns and business lockdowns. Thousands, including members of the U.S. military and health officials, lost their jobs for refusing the shots.
The mRNA shots are not actually vaccines but instead manipulate cells. Tens of thousands of serious side effects have been reported, including fatalities.
We were told the shots would prevent infection or transmission – both false.
On March 29, 2021, Centers for Disease Control Director Rochelle Wallensky told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow: “Our data from the CDC today suggests that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick.”
In July 2021, President Joe Biden assured Americans, “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” Wrong.
In the 1980s, long before the government fed us the COVID falsehoods, it lied over and over about HIV transmission and relative risk. Health officials and the media insisted that everyone was equally vulnerable even while AIDS was decimating the gay male population in the United States.
Anyone pointing this out and suggesting behavioral change was accused of hate, including Randy Shilts, a gay reporter who wrote the book “And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic” before succumbing to the disease.
Over the past few years, the media and ruling elites have been feeding us new lies. Some boys, they say, are really girls and vice versa, and should be drugged or surgically altered. This denial of biology was the theme of the devastating, pro-Trump campaign ad revealing Vice President Kamala Harris as a trans-enthusiastic extremist.
Recent surveys show record lows in public trust of the media and the government. Their playbook has finally failed, largely because people’s own experiences are trumping the given narratives.
Also, powerful social media such as Elon Musk’s X allow the fact checking that the media refuse to do.
Sure, the internet is full of everything under the sun, but the truth has a way of emerging, like a gold nugget glistening in a pan of muddy pebbles.
President-elect Donald Trump’s historic victory on Nov. 5, along with the GOP’s capture of Congress, shows that Americans are tired of being treated like the village idiot.
Some outlets such as the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times are scrambling to present an image of fairer coverage as if they have learned their lesson.
I hope they have. But don’t blame the public for not immediately buying the transformation.
As Thomas Paine observed, “Character is much easier kept than recovered.”
This column was first published at the Washington Times.
