Truth Laced with Kool-Aid

Yesterday, I was drawn into a comment war on a friend's Facebook post. My friend had voiced what so many of us were feeling the morning after, the shock, the horror, the despair. He, like most of us, was not saying anything new or particularly insightful. Like most of us, he was seeking whatever it is we seek when we come together in a community of shared grief. A virtual shiva call. 

I won't go into the details, but there was at least one snide challenge, the "whataboutism" kind of challenge to which we have all become accustomed. As if condemnation of a mob of largely white thugs unleashed upon our Capitol by our president -- our president -- meant we believed looting and violence over the summer were perfectly all right. I tried to explain the concept of false equivalency, that the particular protests to which the guy had referred were peaceful, and that I will always support that sort of thing, whether or not I believe in the cause. He told me he disagreed, and I was happy to let it go. 

Someone I know of but don't really know picked up the thread. Again, I won't go into the details, but the gist of her contributions was this: four prominent Democratic women have incited violence, and, at long last, the righteous, the downtrodden, the always victimized real Americans had justifiably snapped. And she had evidence; a montage of four pictures, each one of a woman (only one of them white and named Nancy) caught in some version of a scowl, superimposed upon a backdrop of what appeared to be hellfire, captioned by a quote. Images of Nazi propaganda sprung to mind, the evil and hideously long-nosed Jew counting money. Your money.

She was outraged by my suggestion that the images were inflammatory propaganda, and insisted I do some research, because "they really said those things." I had little doubt that they said those things, within some unknown context, with some different facial expression, without towering infernos raging behind them. It took about a minute to confirm my hunch, and I sent her the link to the fact check. She had no need to read it, she told me. She knows the truth. 

The truth laced with Kool-Aid. It's infuriating, but, again, I let it go. Why bother? Why bother on Facebook, anyway, on someone else's post, someone who was simply seeking to grieve in a shared community. But if we let it go, how do we bridge the divide? After all, all of our truths are laced with something. 

What we call Trumpism has existed for ages, and will survive the impending fall of this deeply flawed man who grifted his way into our national consciousness. Could it be that we owe him a bit of gratitude, for showing us what we had for so long failed to see?