By Jack Gleason

Honesty is dead. Its time of death is not certain, but it might have been the day Bill Clinton, in a national address, looked into the camera and proclaimed, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

Americans trusted and supported President Clinton — he portrayed himself as an honest, hard-working public servant. When the first allegations appeared, he denied them, and his wife blamed a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” When asked in an interview with Jim Lehrer, “Were you alone together in the Oval Office?” he replied, “I don’t recall.”

When confronted with the proof on the blue dress, he finally admitted that he had engaged in an “improper physical relationship.”

Just prior to the independent counsel’s grand jury, he said: “While my answers were legally accurate, I did not volunteer information. Indeed, I did have a relationship with Ms. Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible.”

People believe habitual liars because we, ourselves, are honest in most situations and we trust others to speak the truth. In fact, the bigger the lie, the more likely we will believe it.

We also find it difficult to question those we trust most, our news media, doctors, military leaders, scientists, judges, and educators. It’s almost impossible to believe that those who have dedicated their lives to public service would lie to those they have sworn to protect.

After seven years of lies, distortions, and misinformation told by his political opponents and a corrupt news media, 59% of Americans still have a negative view of Donald Trump.

Those in the current administration claim to be environmentalists and say global warming will destroy the planet if we don’t curtail the use of fossil fuels immediately. They claim that electric vehicles are the only answer, and gas-powered cars and trucks need to be eliminated, despite the fact that we don’t have the minerals to build EVs.

They say our borders are the safest they’ve ever been, and crime is under control in the inner cities despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary.

Our military leaders tell us that it’s in the vital interest of the United States to send billions to Ukraine to stop the Russians despite evidence of widespread financial corruption.

Our teachers tell us it’s important for our children to know multiple details about sex starting at the age of five, and that they should attend drag queen shows to learn about homosexuals and transsexuals.

Many Americans still believe our administration’s doctors and fear the COVID virus. Over 70% have supposedly gotten at least one injection despite learning it doesn’t entirely work and has multiple side effects.

When people refuse to even consider they are being lied to, their minds will jump through hoops to continue believing. The psychological term is “cognitive dissonance.”

So how can anyone know what to believe on any subject? How can we know if our beliefs are correct or if we are just fooling ourselves? Do we have to become experts on hundreds of topics and do our own independent research?

First, be willing to admit that each of us has been wrong in the past and is likely to be wrong again. How many people believed that the Lewinsky scandal was a right-wing conspiracy designed to hurt Bill Clinton? How did they feel when he finally admitted his affair?

Second, look for beliefs that directly contradict each other. How can we believe the government is serious about stopping climate change when its own predictions show that its favorite programs, like the Paris Climate Accords, will only reduce the temperature of the Earth by less than a degree? Or when we thought the only way to stop COVID was to take the vaccines and we got COVID anyway? If the Biden administration truly cares about the environment and clean water, why is it ignoring the Palestine, Ohio, disaster and a serious threat to our nation’s water supply in favor of a presidential trip to Ukraine?

Third, and most important, look at who benefits from a lie. When a teachers union opposes private schools, it doesn’t have our children’s quality of education in mind; it doesn’t want to lose any funding. If it truly cared about our children, it would insist on better teaching methods and would want to fire dangerous or incompetent teachers.

The people who lie about our elections being “fair and honest” are those who won those elections.

Those who claim our borders are safe don’t care about fentanyl deaths, sex trafficking, or terrorist infiltrators; they don’t care an iota about Americans’ safety or human rights.

Perhaps the greatest lie of all is wokeism. Tom Klingenstein, in his article “DeSantis Goes to War,” lauds Ron DeSantis and Fox’s Tucker Carlson for their fight against 100% anti-American wokeism: “We are at war with a deadly regime, the woke regime. You cannot win a war unless you know you are in one.”

At its core, wokeism claims that America is fatally flawed with its past of slavery, racial discrimination, and sexual discrimination. Wokeism maintains that whites, especially white males, must be discriminated against in order to right the sins of their forebears.

Who benefits from wokeism?

If the Left’s goal is to tear down all of America’s finest beliefs and institutions and replace them with permanent Democrat/Marxist rulers, then wokeism is the ultimate tool.

“Hard work leads to success” is replaced by benefit programs designed to make Americans dependent on government handouts.

Teachers unions ignore skills our children need to be successful and instead teach lies about our country and dumb down critical thinking, while pushing sexual promiscuity and transgenderism.

Democrats pretend to have the interests of African-Americans at heart by penalizing whites and giving preference to blacks even if they are unable to do the work. But more and more are realizing that Democrat policies are destroying our inner cities and dooming black children to lifelong poverty and death.

Klingenstein says: “For the American regime, a just society is one in which free men and women pursue happiness according to their abilities and according to nature. Such a society is one where merit rules. For the woke regime, on the other hand, a just society is one where the regime imposes identity group quotas based on victimhood rankings. Such a regime makes war on merit.”

We need all Americans to expose the truth about the Left’s woke lies and restore honesty and integrity in America’s classrooms, boardrooms, courtrooms, and voting booths. Otherwise, we are all doomed to a life of censorship, crime, poverty, and totalitarian control.