OPINION: Belief, popularity differ from the truth

When historians finish chronicling the politics and cultural issues of this age, librarians and booksellers may have to file those annals among other works of fiction. That’s because the conundrum of our time has become our tenuous relationship with the truth.

There’s more. Considering our wont to let slide all manner of “truthiness,” whether we care enough about the dysfunction remains an open question.

Unless you’ve been vacationing on a distant planet without wifi, you know politics is awash in duplicity. Some in power seem either unable or uninterested in getting to the truth. When things, like a vote, don’t go their way, they too often claim conspiracy, offer head-scratching explanations or simply deflect. They even muse that it’s the work of the devil … or the previous administration. Blaming communists is now all the rage, too.

Let’s start in the nation’s Capital because the fun-filled Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool fiasco has become the metaphor for fabrication that keeps on giving. Even with its watery wackiness, the pool problems are only a single instance of one’s ability to weave a tangled web. The reality is that current political lies come in a variety of flavors and force, each with its own dissembling design: whoppers, whites, bunk, bamboozle, bald-faced, fibs, myths, con, cap, cock and bull, dodge, ruse, jive, smoke blowing — with and without mirrors — and the ever present prevarication. Artificial intelligence has even contributed to the disinformation through slop and hallucinations.

Deceit does have limits. As “AlgaeGate” has shown, trafficking in whole-cloth lies along the internet superhighway, in coffee klatches or under the auspices of ChatGPT pales when making the same subterfuge hold up in a court of law. Some people — judges, to be exact — demand verifiable evidence. You remember the facts, don’t you?

The Department of Justice is dropping cases against a handful of reflecting pool “vandals” as the charges against them evaporate and the truth becomes clear. Nevertheless, the president and others in his orbit continue — without proof — to blame vandals rather than what was apparent early on: science and shoddy work.

Nebraskans know exactly how modern mendacity has real-world consequences.

Remember the abundance of conspiracy theories questioning the fidelity of the 2020 presidential election making the rounds for several months after the votes were in? They fueled an attack on the nation’s Capitol to undo the voters’ decision and essentially overthrow the government. After nearly 156 million votes were cast and counted, no discernable proof was ever found that would have changed the election’s outcome. Still, the conspiracy theories persisted (and still do). They came to be known collectively as “The Big Lie.”

Undaunted and apparently unconvinced of the 2020 election’s veracity, a Nebraska group launched a petition drive to ask voters if they should be required to show a photo ID when they cast their ballots. Granted, there was no evidence that voter fraud was even a thing in Nebraska. Nevertheless, the measure passed easily, we solved a problem that didn’t exist, and we became one of 19 states to enact a voter suppression law after the 2020 election and the advent of “The Big Lie.”

No one is arguing with the efficacy of showing a photo ID to vote in Nebraska. But if one eligible voter is disenfranchised because of the lack of photo ID, that’s one too many.

Department of Justice efforts to obtain state voter rolls are based on the same faulty premise: Our elections from registration to the voting booth to the counting process are defective. This also ignores the constitutional imperative that voting is the purview of the states, not the federal government.

As of this writing, the department is 0-21 in court cases where states have refused to turn over their voters’ information. Nebraska sent along its voters’ details to the Department of Justice early on. To where and to what effect, no one seems to know.

Meanwhile, we edge closer to a political tipping point where opponents for office, parties at odds or debaters at the dinner table share very few truths … or none at all. When we run out of common truths, hopes for cooperation and community are dimmed.

Logicians and psychologists might counsel that we’ve driven into the neighborhood bordering confirmation bias: Seeking information that confirms what we already believe and rejecting information that does not.

If it were only as easy as turning around. Meanwhile, just because something aligns with my worldview or my party, my favorite podcaster or my political hero says it’s true, doesn’t make it so.