How legends, not facts, are dominating American life

In American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson writes,

From the health of FDR late in his third term, to “family man” JFK, to the moral “lion of the Senate” Teddy Kennedy, our media printed legends when facts were considered too heretical or injurious to themselves and their icons.

Yet when an ideological media decides to print legends, then we all descend into a nation buttressed by lies.

Take the “Russian collusion” lie. For three years, everyone from Hillary Clinton and the New York Times to John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, and the newsrooms of CNN and MSNBC, assured the nation that Donald Trump stole the 2016 election through “collusion.” Indeed, Trump was declared an active Russian “asset.” That was pure legend from its beginning with no proof, and none of its purveyors have yet apologized.

The special counsel Mueller, while under oath no less, could not recall any real knowledge of the Steele dossier, or indeed Fusion GPS, its progenitor—the two foundational catalysts for his entire investigation. James Comey on 245 occasions swore to the House Intelligence Committee that “he could not remember” when asked about the basic details of his own FBI investigations.

No modern era has changed American life more than three events in the 12 months between February 2020 and February 2021—the COVID-19 pandemic, the death of George Floyd, and the January 6 Capitol assault and riot. Yet in all three cases, legends, not facts still dominate.

In sum, the left-wing postmodern idea of “truth” as a mere pick-and-choose official narrative is now normal. The relativist idea that everyone has a legitimate “truth” of his own broke out of its incubator—in this case the university—and is now a scourge upon the land. Legends become fact, and lies become truth on the basis of their service to a cause.

In our upside-down world, the smeared “liar” is the revealer of such fraud. And sadly the deified “truth-teller” is in truth the abettor of falsity.

And all this is the work of amoral “moralists.”

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