How many times does someone have to lie to you before you call them a liar?
One? Five? Twenty?
It seems like many Americans are okay being lied to over and over and over again.
Here’s just one example.
Michael Brown was a young black teenager—a “gentle giant”—who, on August 9th, 2014, during a routine police stop in Ferguson, Missouri, raised his hands and pleaded for his life as he looked down the barrel of racist white police officer Darren Wilson’s gun. Brown famously held his hands up and yelled, “don’t shoot,” before he turned and ran.
Wilson shot him six times in the back, killing him, dead.
If you bought that, you bought a lie.
Here are the facts:
Michael Brown was 6’4” and weighed 292 pounds—80 pounds heavier than Officer Wilson. He was a giant, but there was nothing gentle about him.
Brown and his friend had just robbed a convenience store. Wilson, in his police car, spotted them walking in the middle of the street—the two men matched the description of the thieves. Wilson drove up and told them to move to the sidewalk.
Brown refused, blocked Wilson from opening his car door, punched the officer through the open window, and reached for Wilson’s gun. Wilson fired in self-defense, striking Brown’s hand.
Brown ran. Wilson got out of the car and pursued him. Brown then suddenly turned and charged Wilson. Wilson repeatedly told him to stop, but Brown kept coming. Wilson shot Brown until he collapsed.
A local grand jury and federal investigators from the Obama justice department concluded that Officer Wilson was justified in his use of deadly force.
There is no evidence that Brown ever held his hands up and yelled, “don’t shoot.”
The whole story was manufactured by the media.
It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. Not by a long shot.
The biggest whopper of them all was the Russia Hoax—the entirely made-up story that Donald Trump the candidate and then Donald Trump the President of the United States was a Russian agent. This dark fantasy preoccupied the legacy media for three years. It involved dozens of interlocking lies, almost all of which were planted by Trump’s Democratic opponent.
Given the sad state of our corporate media, it is perfectly fitting that The New York Times and The Washington Post won Pulitzer Prizes, the highest award in journalism, for dutifully reporting each lie as if it were the gospel truth.
Then, there was the “Charlottesville Lie,” that the President described neo-Nazis as “very fine people” at a press conference following a riot in Charlottesville, Virginia in August of 2017.
He never said any such thing. There’s a transcript of the press conference to prove it. The real quote was: “…I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists. They should be condemned totally.” No matter. The media had manufactured the story and they were sticking to it. Additional commonsense evidence to the contrary—like the President has Jewish grandchildren—was simply ignored.
Or how about the “Laptop from Hell,” the computer that Hunter Biden left at a computer repair shop and never picked up? That story was broken by the New York Post in October 2020. In addition to files depicting Hunter’s personal predilections, emails and text messages on the laptop suggested that his father, presidential candidate Joe Biden was involved in corrupt business dealings with the Russians, the Ukrainians, and the Chinese.
Twitter immediately banned the New York Post story from being shared on its platform. Did the legacy media jump all over this egregious violation of the freedom of the press? No, they jumped all over the fiction that it was another “Russian disinformation” campaign.
For the record, I don’t care whether you think Trump is great or horrible. The issue is not Trump. The issue is truth. How do you determine who’s telling it?
One obvious way, as I’ve already suggested, is if someone or some news source lies over and over again, you may not want to trust them.
Who told you that Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh was a sexual abuser and a gang rapist?
Or that a Catholic high school kid cruelly mocked a Native American war veteran on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial?
Or that mounted border agents used whips to control migrants at the Texas border?
The legacy media. The corporate media. The establishment media. Whatever you want to call them.
They’ve lied to your face… and they’ll keep lying.
You can keep believing their lies. Or, you can show a little curiosity and take some responsibility.
Read past the headlines. Consume information from across the political spectrum.
Determine for yourself who deserves your trust, and who doesn’t. In the process, you’ll be surprised how much you’ll learn.
This is how you become an informed citizen.
Now that’s a novel idea.
Tim Pool - Host of TimcastIRL
