Almost seven years ago, the media launched its vicious ‘very fine people’ hoax, which dogged Trump throughout his presidency. It turns out that it still lives on, with some people only now discovering that the media and Democrat establishment lied to them. Not only does a lie travel halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on but a corrupt media and political infrastructure have the power to ensure that the truth never gets its pants on.

In August 2017, as a prelude to the anarchic destruction of statues in 2020, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, decided to tear down its Confederate monuments and memorials. A Neo-Nazi group used this as the pretext for a march. It’s important to note that these were actual Nazis, proudly wearing swastikas and carrying Nazi flags. That is, they weren’t constitutional, pro-American conservatives, whom the Dems routinely label as “Nazis” or “fascists.”

Two other groups appeared at the protest. One group consisted of progressive Democrats eager to tear down America’s history. Also present, however, was a small cadre of people who thought it was a mistake to ape communists and wantonly destroy historic statuary. They weren’t supporting the Confederacy; they were supporting a rational, rather than destructive, approach to untangling our nation’s complicated Reconstruction era.

Image by freepik.

A Neo-Nazi drove through the crowd, killing one person. President Trump condemned the Nazis but supported those who objected to destroying our nation’s symbols, arguing that, once the destruction started, there wouldn’t be a stopping point. Trump was prescient, as we saw in 2020 when mobs tore down and otherwise desecrated statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and others.

And then there was this:

Here are the unambiguous actual words of President Trump:

“Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group.  But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.  You had people in that group – excuse me, excuse me, I saw the same pictures you did.  You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.”

After another question at that press conference, Trump became even more explicit:

“I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.”

Only someone completely dishonest, having heard or read that, would say that Trump called the Neo-Nazis “very fine people.” He didn’t. But we can call the media “completely dishonest” because they seized upon that phrase and trumpeted to the world that Trump had called Nazis “very fine people.”

Once the lie got started, nothing stopped it because it managed to make Trump toxic to most blacks. Biden opened his run for president by reciting the lie and keeps repeating it. The media never correct Biden.

But you know all this, so why am I still writing about it? I’m writing about it because it is one of the stickiest lies in the history of American politics. Seven years after the media first articulated this lie, new Trump supporters (Shaun Maguire) and those disaffected with Biden (Bill Ackman) are only now discovering that they’ve been the victims of a destructive hoax:

Agreed. Until I watched this video I thought @realDonaldTrump was referring to the neo-nazis based on the press that I had read and other media. https://t.co/RBfKJrHAac

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) June 17, 2024

Yes, those are just two men, but they represent Americans who swim in a sea of media dishonesty. Like the fish not knowing it’s in the water, they have no idea that their political values and conclusions are unrelated to reality.

Or, to go a bit more philosophical, they’re like the prisoners chained in Plato’s allegorical cave, which he used to explain the chasm between those who know the truth and those who only think they know the truth. The latter are not out in the sunlight, seeing the world as it is. Instead, they’re trapped in a cave, forced to watch a puppeteer’s clever shadows projected on the walls. To the prisoners, those shadows are their reality.

In modern America, most Americans voluntarily live in those caves. They slavishly watch the shadows that a malevolent and powerful media conglomerate and political establishment project to ensure that the cave dwellers never see sunlight or know the truth.

Honestly, I have no idea how we can stop the projections or drag those prisoners into the light. Kudos, though, to people like Ackman and Maguire, who, having seen the truth, are doing their best to help others see it, too.