Say NO to the Big Lie - November 5, 2020 (Facebook Post)

     When I was involved in a city-wide program in Topeka, Kansas in January of 1994 called “Love Thy Neighbor,” which was intended to counter the appearance of the KKK at the Capitol that day, I walked into White Concert Hall of Washburn University through the gauntlet of the Westboro Baptist Church picketers.   I heard them shouting at people walking by, “Don’t go in there!  There are f*gs in there!  And Jews, too!”  

    The WBC perpetrated a steady stream of ridicule, intimidation, lawsuits, taking liens out on the homes of people they opposed.   They spread a big lie, over and over, about the “homosexual agenda” taking over every minute corner of our national life.  

     Now, I listen to our national leader making baseless claims about voter fraud, which he has been doing for months, dividing between legal and illegal ballots. 

     People voted.  LEGALLY.  They sent in ballots.  LEGALLY.  They voted early, LEGALLY. 

     When he says, “Stop the fraud,” I think what he is doing is giving a battle cry to people who see right through him and his subterfuge and deceit and spreading of a new “Big Lie” about the elections.  He might as well say that people like me did it.   It would fit right into the mood that he is generating for his followers.    In the 1930s, Father Charles Coughlin, in his radio addresses, talked about “Good Jews” and “Bad Jews,” with the “bad Jews” being the ones not following his line if prejudice and isolationism.   This is like a new McCarthyism related to voting, which goes along with accusations, during recent rallies, of people being “communists” when they are most certainly not.   Father Coughlin, McCarthy and our current leader were using fear all too effectively.  We can’t buy into to anything like that anymore.

     And for the followers of this leader, I am not going to call you names.  I am only going to say that I am disappointed in you, including those of you who might be in the web of my relationships.    Maybe some of you don’t buy these falsehoods.  Some of you, I know, do go along with exactly what I just heard on television from this man. 

    If you do accept what he said, you have insulted me and my vote, and insulted an entire country.