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Friday, February 25, 2022

" . . .time made truth of what appeared to be"

A young girl, in 1921 Ireland, disappears.  Some of her clothing was found at the beach near her home. After much searching, there is no body found, just the evidence left on the beach.  

"As the surface of the seashore rocks was pitted by the waves and gathered limpets that further disguised what lay beneath, so time made truth of what appeared to be.  The days that passed, in becoming weeks, still did not disturb the surface an assumption had created.  The weather of a beautiful summer continued with neither sign nor hint that credence had been misplaced.  The single sandal found among the rocks became a sodden image of death; and as the keening on the pier at Kilauran traditionally marked distress brought by the sea, so silenced did at Lahardane*."

William Trevor,
The Story of Lucy Gault
But the reader knows better than the other characters in the book.  The clothing and that sandal were snatched by a 
dog while the girl was, in the author's  word, 'bathing' in the ocean.  In fact the girl is angry at her parents because they have decided they must leave the only home she knows.  They haven't told her the reason they are leaving - an attack on their house by young Irishmen with petrol cans.  Other large rural homes have also been attacked and other land owners have left.  


But my attention today is this phrase "time made truth of what appeared to be."  Read it a couple of times.  What appeared to be.  The incidents in the book took place in 1921.  

Today truths don't accidentally lead us astray.  They are meticulously created to lead us astray, to divide and conquer.  Fox News repeats them over and over until time makes truth of what appears to be.  Even to the extent that other media repeat the claims. They are designed to trigger our fears, to weaken us.  And we know that Russia plays a role in this exercise that most of the Republican Party is afraid to confront.  Few GOP politicians have the ability or the courage to challenge the lies the party is using in an attempt to fool enough voters into voting for the GOP.   

As I watch Ukrainians face the aggression of Russia, I see a courage that we see rarely in the US these days.  As I see the videos of Russian people protesting the war, I see a courage much greater than is required of most white Americans when they protest.  And when I see President Zelensky vow to stay in Kiev and lead the opposition to Russia, I see a courage that, for instance, my junior Senator doesn't come near to having.  He won't even risk an election five years off, to publicly voice opposition to, say, to vote to impeach the man who called for an insurrection to overturn the election.



*I've looked up Lahardane.  Such a place exists, it's on the ocean in the book, but not on maps.

 

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