Way back in my college news reporting days, I oberved an ugly neon green substance leaking into the Red Cedar River from an aging pipe as I was crossing pedestrian bridge behind the MSU Library. On that cold winter day, I was coming from a class and heading to my afternoon and evening hours at The State News where I worked as an intrepid campus reporter. That neon green substance was going to be my story.
Dozens of phone calls later and several hours of interviews, I learned the pipe was run-off from the nearby Spartan Stadium parking lot and the green liquid was merely the benign chemical used to melt snow and ice in parking lots. It was not toxic, not poisonous and it wasn’t contaminating the Red Cedar. It took several sources to convince me there wasn’t a massive environmental coverup happening on campus. What can I say? I was young, a green reporter [literally and figuratively].
I could have taken a leaf out of a certain Lansing area television journalist’s book and published a story of all the denials, but that’s not responsible journalism. My editor reined me in, and I moved on to another story.
I’m reminded of this every time I read something about how childhood vaccines cause autism. [They don’t.]
Or how our goverment is spraying mind control substances called chemtrails. [It doesn’t.]
Or how the current occupant of the White House insists he won the November election. [He didn’t.]
Or how there were massive voting fraud and schemes. [No evidence has ever been offered. The few errors and anomalies discovered were quickly corrected.]
In fact, about 25% of all Americans and nearly half of all Republicans actually believe Joe Biden’s election win was the direct result of voter fraud. [It wasn’t.]
Despite all the evidence, despite all the explanations from election officials and people trained to count votes, people still don’t want to see the truth – that Joe Biden won the election by winning more votes.
Skepticism is hard wired into my thinking. As a journalist, I lived by the phrases: “Trust, but verify.” and “If your mother says she loves you, get a second source.”
It’s one thing to be skeptical. It’s something else to completely disregard evidence and the truth sitting right in front of you.
Yes it’s true that Donald Trump’s campaign had more than 74 million votes, the highest number of votes an incumbent president has ever earned. Congratulations to him.
But Joe Biden had more than 81 million votes, and his campaign captured 306 electoral college votes. He won the election and will become the 46th President of the United States.
Those are simply facts. And no one gets to make up their own facts.
If we don’t agree on basic facts, we’re never going to be able to live in the same reality.
The last time our nation was this divided over basic facts, there was a civil war….
Writer and Raconteur 