I have several good friends who support Trump. They are caring, decent human beings, and I consider it one of the great failures of my life that I have been completely unable to convince them of the error of their ways.
One of my friends recently sent me a videotape of Joe Biden’s appearance on the show “The View,” which took place in April 2019. The tape shows Biden virtually incoherent. He stumbled and bumbled and looked pretty much like he had suffered and not recovered from a stroke.
I know that Biden is not always the most articulate person, but this tape struck me as some kind of an exaggeration. I Googled the actual show and listened to the original version, which was considerably different. It was obvious the video which was sent to me had been altered to distort the truth.
I called my friend to tell him what I had discovered, and when he compared it to the actual footage, he too realized that it had been altered. I cannot tell you whether the RNC, the Russians or some high school kid on his living room couch distorted the tape, but what I know is that it is becoming more and more difficult to ascertain the objective truth.
My friend’s reaction to all of this was somewhat disturbing. Although he acknowledged that reality had been played with, he showed no great sense of outrage. He pretty much expressed the feeling that this kind of misbehavior was to be expected in this time of new technology and was perpetrated by both sides of the aisle.
My fear is that the moment dirty tricks are accepted as the new norm, then it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Right is still right, and wrong is still wrong, and dirty tricks are still dirty tricks. God help us all, regardless of political persuasion, when we can no longer believe what we see or what we hear.
Burt Ross