Pity the poor Washington Post Fact Checker. Heck, pity any fact-checker in this political atmosphere. These people can’t be getting much sleep anymore.

Some days I love Kurt Eichenwald. Other days I really love Kurt Eichenwald.
Screenshot from Kurt Eichenwald’s Twitter page.

Facts, you see, are apparently now optional … or whatever you want them to be, reality be damned. But what can we expect when we have a leader who, as of Dec. 30, had made 7,645 false or misleading claims in 710 days, according to The Washington Post, including 15 bottomless Pinocchio statements (three- or four-Pinocchio falsehoods repeated at least 20 times). Those claims are still adding up, and he’s averaging about 15 a day lately.

But hold on, I hear fans of the current president bellow, the mainstream media never fact-checked the previous Oval Office resident, and are biased against this president. Uh, nope, and nope.

Both presidents have been thoroughly fact-checked, though Donald Trump is the more fact-checked simply by virtue of his prolific output (seriously, cut his executive time and make him do actual work rather than tweet, watch TV, call in to Fox News shows, berate reporters just for asking questions, etc.). All those rage tweets and heated rally claims add up. It doesn’t hurt that countless databases are readily available on the Internet for research, either. Lesson for the big guy: Once it’s on the Internet, it’s there forever. You thought you could just delete the hamberder tweet and no one would notice? Ha!

Dang it … I wanted hamberders! I’m assuming they don’t contain beef, which I can’t digest.
Screenshot from Masked King Creole’s Twitter page.

As for bias, many members of the mainstream media, especially in the past couple of years, appear to be so cowed by constant accusations of bias that they often go the other way and give the administration too much leeway (then there’s all the free media during the 2016 campaign, but that’s another story). For instance, the networks wouldn’t carry an immigration address by Barack Obama in 2014 (because, reportedly, they said it would be overly partisan), but carried one by George W. Bush in 2006, and by Donald Trump last week. Clearly, they need a consistent policy. I’d suggest the Ten Commandments rule (inspired by those state capitols including my own surprised that people would be upset about a religious monument on public property): When you open the door for one, you open it for all.

But clearly, we also need someone in power who doesn’t make so many easily disproved (laughably so, in many cases) claims—never said Mexico would pay for the wall (um … you might want to check rally speeches, campaign platform, etc., where it was said repeatedly); biggest inauguration crowd ever (official and wire service photos and transit reports made quick work of this); Washington Post and New York Times are failing newspapers with dwindling subscribers (both papers’ subscriber numbers are up significantly); Chris Cuomo never asked Sen. Richard Blumenthal about his military record when he interviewed him (it was the first question, though Blumenthal didn’t answer); and so on. But then, this administration runs on “alternative facts” (gosh, thanks for that one, Kellyanne … and that Bowling Green Massacre … remember the fallen, y’all).

Lives were changed forever that day … that never happened.
Image found on Know Your Meme.

Sigh. We expect a little hyperbole in our politics, but what do you call it when the majority of what’s said is hyperbole or outright false? No matter what party is in power, we shouldn’t so readily accept lies as truth.

Investigative data reporter James Ball, formerly of WikiLeaks and the Guardian and now at BuzzFeed, took on this idea in Post-Truth, his 2017 book with the subtitle I can’t print in a family newspaper (one of three similar books with the same main title, each focusing on Trump and the Brexit referendum). Ball related the anecdote about thousands of Muslims supposedly celebrating 9/11 in New Jersey, according to Trump, which has been debunked. Trump told rally-goers that reporter Serge Kovaleski changed his original story about the supposed celebration (he didn’t, as he had no time machine; he simply pointed out that there were no substantiated reports about the alleged incident), and that Kovaleski groveled to him and said he didn’t know what he wrote (didn’t happen). Trump later said he didn’t mock Kovaleski and his disability (the video belies that claim), and that he didn’t know the man anyway so couldn’t have known about his disability (Kovaleski had interviewed him multiple times in person throughout the years, at least since his stint with the New York Daily News).

In the still side-by-side, it’s already obvious. The video is even more obvious. Trump doesn’t not mock anyone (except Putin).
Image found on Gothamist.

The Kovaleski incident, Ball wrote, “forms a pattern for the new president which we’ll see again: an aggressive but unevidenced claim is followed by a search for anything which seems to corroborate Trump’s speech—then, once something’s been seized on as the ‘proof’ of the claim, anyone attacking that claim faces a series of ad hominem assaults. The final position becomes a matter of faith: to support Trump, one generally has to believe the full stack—initial claim, its proof, and that Trump didn’t attack the reporter. The items come as a package, facts and nuance be damned.”

And that’s where we are now, with people believing everything they’re told without facts to back it up, then repeating it, ad nauseam, spreading the lie even further.

Add that to nonstop childish insults (sorry for insulting children there … they’re better than most of these) and you have a recipe for unhappiness for thinking people.

This is just terrifying to me.
Image found on imgflip.

When we watch fiction on stage or screen, we’re supposed to suspend disbelief so that we can enjoy stories about superheroes joining forces to save the world from malevolent creatures from other universes (dang it, Avengers, hurry up with that next installment!), or paranormal scientists saving New York from demons, ghosts and 10-story-tall manifestations of an evil Sumerian god in the form of a marshmallow man. We don’t actually believe they’re real, and if we do, we have bigger problems.

Especially if that Sumerian god is reading your mind and conjuring up a huge marshmallow man. Or worse, an actual tangerine toddler.

No, I don’t wanna eat that stuff. I want hamberders!
Image found on Wonkette.

We shouldn’t be suspending disbelief for real life. If we see something on live TV and are told later that we didn’t see that or hear what was said as it was being said, we shouldn’t just say, “Oh, OK, if you say so.” (No, the president definitely didn’t say he would be proud to shut down the government and wouldn’t blame Democrats for it! That live feed was obviously fake.) As Ronald Reagan often said, trust but verify. Fact-checkers, especially those who provide links to original sources so you can look at them for yourself, are your friends. Sometimes really weird friends (who does research for fun? these guys!), but friends nonetheless.

Ugh. That’s more than enough politics for this lifetime. Did you hear about that egg on Instagram?

A photo of an egg beat (get it?) Kylie Jenner’s Instagram like record. Good. In other news, I had an egg burrito for dinner. Condolences to the family.
Image found on BuzzFeed.