When lies make you sputter

In the current super-heated medical-political world you hear lies that make you sputter. How can an apparently thinking person voice such thoughts? Doesn’t this nonsense stick coming out of the throat? Answering with facts just doesn’t matter.

All those years of study and experience based on the notion that if you research and marshal your facts and present them cogently you can make a difference, be convincing. Maybe not. That’s distressing, ground-of-being shaking. Does education not matter in the end?

Up against alternative facts, brings back two crystal memories of being about eight years old and gut-punched by “alternative facts.”

A babysitter who went to high school, and therefore seemed an adult, announced “Doctors predict that in fifty years we won’t have toes. That’s evolution.” I stoutly maintained that this was crazy. “Doctors say so,” she rejoined primly. It was like trying to argue a point in a language you don’t know, like Finnish. I did understand that “doctors” was too broad a term but I didn’t know the word for “evolutionary biologist.” I knew there was evolution and it was slow, but couldn’t come up with exactly how slow. I knew toes were important (wiggling, picking up stuff, walking) but “physiology” or “body mechanics” were beyond me. Bottom line, I was a kid and she was grown up. I felt helpless, reduced to sputtering, “You’re wrong.” I remember staying up to grill my father on The Matter of Toes, but the babysitter was long gone. I think he nixed her return. But still I remember that visceral sense of helplessness.

About that time I went after school to a girlfriend’s house. It seemed like a good enough time. I guess board games and cards, making a snack, riding bikes, playing with her dog. The usual stuff. No arguments. I went home, fully thinking we’d do this again, maybe at my house. No. The next day at school she said I couldn’t come back.  Ever. “Why not?” I asked. “My dog told me he doesn’t like people with dirty blond hair.” I was innocent enough to have run mentally through assorted logical fallacies with this statement. Dogs don’t speak. Dogs don’t see color. The dog gave every sign of “liking” me. My hair wasn’t dirty or even blond. Something told me not to argue. After all, I’d thought we had a good time but that was wrong. Still, the dog thing uttered so blandly, like infallible gospel, had won the day. Stopped me cold.

Lies are bigger now. COVID, democracy, global warming. Still there’s that gobsmacked feeling of impotence. Makes you want to curl your toes. Or wash your hair. Or get your dad to tell someone off. But he’s not here anymore and you feel alone.

About Pamela Schoenewaldt

Pamela Schoenewaldt, historical novels of immigration and the search for self in new worlds: WHEN WE WERE STRANGERS, SWIMMING IN THE MOON, and UNDER THE SAME BLUE SKY (all HarperCollins).