I was once asked to run for public office…not a high office…it was the county planning commission during the days of “Save Our Saluda.”  While flattered, I didn’t have to ponder running for even an instant.  “No way, no how!”  My refusal wasn’t that I didn’t care about the Saluda River or our environment.  I do and attempt to be a good steward of the environment I live in…or on.

My reason for turning the opportunity down was primarily what has played out in the news for the previous week(s), on social media and what will be played out in the tarnished halls of the Senate today (Thursday).

I feared copious amounts of dirty laundry might be made visible from the drying line that was my previous life.  I also admit to being lazy and apolitical at the time but my laziness and apoliticalism (word?) paled in comparison to what I perceived was my lack of morality from my rebellious twenties…and thirties.  When it came to rebellion, I was a late bloomer.

Today there will be a hearing in the halls of the Senate, in fact, it has already begun as I write this.  The hearing won’t be for some low-level public office but for the highest court in the land.  At the center is a man accused of sexual assault thirty-five years after the fact.  That is worrisome.  Worrisome because thirty-five years ago I would have been a year away from enlightenment…and hopefully, atonement.

Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged dirty laundry will be displayed along with Christine Blasely Ford’s.  What will not be displayed are the facts.  The hearing will simply be “he said, she said” proposition at best.  No corroborative testimony will be offered.  On social media, both participants will be crucified along party lines and the outcome will have no effect on the confirmation vote to come.  My cynicism is showing.

Worse, I believe, the conclusions we arrive at today will be the same conclusions we had when we began the day…conclusions partly arrived at by our own personal cognitive dissonance and subject to party affiliation.  Conclusions that have little to do with the actual truth.

Blame will be laid; one side’s blame will be different than the other’s and we will still be just as divided when this day ends as we were when it began.

A microcosm of the sorry state of politics and society in the United States today?  The outcome will be about the hypocrisy of the people in the room, those who support them and those who simply bought into a specific party line.  The idea that the only truth that matters is the truth you believe in.  The issue is partisan hypocrisy and neither group is without blame.  Truth is the biggest loser.  Whose truth I wonder?  When this day is over, I still will not know.

The image is from The Foundation of Economic Education at https://fee.org/articles/the-media-and-trump-are-both-to-blame-for-the-death-of-truth/

Further musings by Don Miller can be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM