Hannah Arendt was a German, Jewish, American, Philosopher, and Historian from the 20th century. Her insights on authoritarian and totalitarian government accurately predicted today’s situation in the United States.  If you read nothing else by her, these quotes should get you started one what you need to understand.  The quotes and language below are from a website called American Memories.

thoughts from Hannah Arendt:

When you can no longer separate fact from fiction, you can no longer separate right from wrong. And when that happens — you don’t resist anything. You just drift.

She (Arendt) saw it happen in Germany in real time. The endless propaganda wasn’t designed to make people believe everything — it was designed to make them believe nothing. Once reality itself became a matter of opinion, ordinary people stopped objecting. Not because they approved. Because they’d stopped thinking it was their job to know.

In her 1967 essay Truth and Politics, Arendt went further. She wrote about how constant, pervasive lying doesn’t just spread false information — “it corrodes the very concept of truth. When every fact can be dismissed as partisan, when reality becomes a battleground of competing claims, truth loses its authority. And once truth loses authority, so do justice, morality, and human dignity.”

Modest Proposal for Good

Consider yourself a miner for truth.  Suggestions include stop listening exclusively to influencers and read authentic historians like Arendt.  Writing history is a hard won discipline requiring training, a commitment to objectivity, and the sacrifice of very hard work.   Influencers are called influencers because they have been influenced and want to influence.  Influence may or may not point to truth.  Challenge the influences in your life.  The truth lies not with the left or the right, democrat or republican, but under that mythical north star that is the search light of your conscience in league with your rationality. That in times like these would be very good.