RFK Jr., in his recent announcement of his candidacy for president, declared that he was going to do something truly radical if elected president: tell the truth, no matter how uncomfortable or unpopular //

The idea of a politician being held to such a standard shouldn’t be radical, but it absolutely is. At this point, we simply take it for granted that if a government actor’s lips are moving, he’s probably lying. The only questions are how much of what he’s saying is exaggerated, distorted, or outright fabricated, and for what purpose?

And because the corporate media that is supposed to expose and chronicle politicans’ lies is almost always in on the deception itself, the onus falls on the individual or a trusted independent media source to sort fact from fiction. What this leads to is a devastating decay in trust in government and an erosion of civic engagement of the sort seen in Eastern Europe in the heyday of Soviet communism.

“The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying but they keep lying anyway, and we keep pretending to believe them.”
– Elena Gorokhova, A Mountain of Crumbs