There's a lot of talk these days about the big lie. My response, in general, is which one?
American history is replete with instances of the big lie and we Americans are quite consistent in choosing delusion over determinable facts. While no political party in our country has ever been eaten up with honesty, study shows there's always one leading the way with the big lie.
Usually, the big lie has taken the form of a boogeyman we all need to be worried about. Thus early Americans referred to the dark skinned natives of the continent as "savages", although in most cases it was the Europeans who acted like animals. If the original Americans were inhuman, wouldn't they have just wiped out the first European explorers and been done with it instead of waiting until the newly arrived white people had infected them with diseases and stolen their lands before going on the defensive?
The other big lie many of us bought into was that light skinned humans were superior to dark skinned humans, by design, and therefore slavery was a natural extension of the creator's intent.
It's hard to choose between wiping out a population of humans here and enslaving people on another continent and shipping them here as the great original sin of America, but many people who track sins rank those two as our greatest offenses.
I didn't say all people, because the same liars who formulated those first two still exist in certain churches and parties and are still out there claiming our primary sin is not accepting their twisted dogma.
The American taliban is real and chose to replace the brown guy they used to pretend to worship with the lily white flim flam man they always wanted to worship. The sad truth is that particular group of believers have always been eager to trade the Prince of Peace for the next lily white Duke of Destruction promising favors just to the annointed.
So the big lie has always been a touchstone of the American story. From the Alamo, to states rights, to the Klu Klux Klan, to Japanese-Americans in internment camps, to Sharia law in the heartland, to Critical Race Theory in elementary schools...all these were distortions meant to divide us and justify actions that undercut the true strength of our nation.
Which is and always will be our diversity. There has never been a nation with the diversity of the United States of America. We are the country where all people of the world can find a home and be free.
Unless the latest big lie wins. Because the latest big lie, that the last presidential election was somehow phony and Putin's Puppy will be reinstated as soon as real patriots rise to the occasion, is the latest assault on the diversity of the American people.
The fact that most of an American political party seems to be willing to blow up our electoral system in support of the big lie shouldn't be surprising. Every American political party before the two we're stuck with have committed suicide on a big lie. Every single one.
The only question is will this big lie take another party with it, or will it be the whole country this time.