#19) Truthiness

February 21, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

The following quote is from an article by Matt Malone, S.J., Editor-in-Chief of the Jesuit magazine America.

"The founders knew, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, that 'a despotic government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of news writers who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth…put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers.'  Jefferson believed that the pursuit of truth, especially those empirical facts that are the first instance of truth and the foundation of good journalism, is the surest guard against tyranny, so much so that he once said that if he had to choose between newspapers without a government, or a government without newspapers, he preferred the former."

Sitting here on the cusp of this world of alternative facts with a press that is increasingly unable to do its job is scary for me.  I suppose the Sean Spicers and Kellyanne Conways of your administration will be well rewarded (somehow) for spewing your lies.  I am watching and listening to the news less and less because I feel, more and more, that your surrogates and public agents can't be trusted to speak truthfully or even rationally.

I fully expect to see another new entry in Wikipedia soon – Trumpian Logic. How would one even define that oxymoron?

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton