There’s a game that many young children used to play; you would cover your eyes and because you couldn’t see anything, you would believe you were invisible. Your parents and older siblings would usually play along saying that they couldn’t see you.
I remember my sister doing it when she was small and me telling her that I could in fact see her. I remember her anger that I didn’t want to play along, the stamping of her little feet as she announced over and over again that she was invisible and her calling me a liar. I was suddenly reminded of this episode recently when I saw a montage of President Donald Trump speaking.
It is no secret how badly the COVID crisis has been handled in the United States and the United Kingdom; at least, it’s no secret to the rest of the world outside of those countries. We had old Boris who eventually got the virus himself after he visited wards and shook hands with people who had tested positive for it, and old Tangerine Dream braying from his ivory tower in Washington that we should inject disinfectant into our bodies.
More worrying than the outright lies are the half-truths, mistruths and backtracking which seem to have become a universal phenomenon spreading throughout democracies everywhere. Before, if you were a politician, you would have to make some form of effort to at least publicly combat questions and angry statements thrown your way, but now, if someone points out a flaw in your argument all you need to do is tell them that they are fake. And somehow, the crowd cheers. When did we stop needing the truth?
Why does no one seem to care about conflicting messages and half-truths?
As impartial and independent media outlets continue to lose funding and the list of negative comments under their requests for donations keeps growing, it really does blow my mind how cheap the truth is to some people. They would literally rather believe the croakings of a leader who contradicts himself at every sharp turn than pick up a newspaper, read what actually took place at that same turn and then make a decision based on that. The mind boggles at how people would rather put their faith in men in bad suits with fat bank accounts and everything to gain from the lie, rather than believe the person who is mostly paid in hatred for writing the truth.
After a week of conflicting news about whether we should wear masks in public and whether or not we will be fined if we don’t, our prime minister swans up and down Republic Street taking hands and photos like he’s Gandhi. Our minister for economy, investment and small business, who would do well to try harder to keep his expensively shod foot out of his mouth, decided to act weeks too late in capping the exorbitant prices of face masks while unceremoniously throwing pharmacists who have been on the frontline of this epidemic under the bus. He failed to say that many pharmacies had bought the masks at exhorbitant prices from suppliers and that’s why prices had exploded. He knew that people were scared, frustrated and looking for a scapegoat and he didn’t think twice before presenting them with the sacrificial lamb.
Why does no one seem to care about conflicting messages and half-truths? Why is no one set on defending the bastions that keep democracies alive: an independent media, a belief that truth however painful must come before self-interest, a government that is kept accountable. They say that we get the politicians we deserve, but surely, we deserve better.