With the amount of garbage being mainlined into the media stream, resisting the undertow takes doing. But don’t expect the rest of us to buy what you’re selling if you’re unwilling to at least stand behind it. 

Readers may recall a recent case in point appearing in these pages. Clearly designed to generate traffic to a political website and (surprise) donations, I won’t mention the site by name here. 

In service of discrediting Donald Trump’s felony convictions, it relied on a reservoir of verifiably false information and equivalencies that included referring to a website where the cited article is no longer available and others revealing (no doubt unintended) the disinformation in straightforward fashion. No wonder authorship hid behind some committee. A few examples remind us that wishing neither makes it so nor converts bullcrap into anything else.

No, the FEC didn’t fine Hillary Clinton (and no, I wasn’t a supporter) for anything, let alone $113,000 for the same crimes Trump was recently convicted for. Her campaign settled with the FEC, without admission of guilt, for $8,000 to avoid further costly litigation.

No, an opinion from a political commentator about what Trump’s convictions might mean for our future isn’t a statement of support for him.

And no, Trump wasn’t railroaded by the same discrimination that denied justice to countless black Americans since the founding of our republic. He was convicted by a jury of his peers, the selection for which included his own lawyers, and will be sentenced accordingly—more than he was willing to grant the “Central Park Five” in his 1989 full-page ad calling for those five black men to be executed for the assault and rape of a white woman in the Central Park Jogger Case that year. Even after the Five were released from prison upon new evidence confirming their innocence, Trump continued insisting they were guilty. 

I’ll assume readers agree that law enforcement, or any group outside a church, isn’t composed entirely of choirboys, but on balance, it endeavors to do a good job. So with Trump’s unfailing belief in his infallibility, and a cult willing to do his bidding, how much fairness could we expect from a justice system he might again oversee?

But credit his insight into understanding how useful his firehose of lies has been in undermining faith in our institutions in furtherance of rebranding himself as the second coming of Moses. Only then does he possess the power to part waters thereby delivering salvation, unto us, from his equally useful and contrived deep state, all while delivering salvation, unto himself, (surprise again) from further criminal prosecution, a hardship he’s willing to endure on behalf of all of us. Can you see the halo? 

With his continued election denialism after 60 failed legal challenges, his civil liability for rape and defrauding New York State, his 34 felony convictions, his ongoing indictments for mishandling national secrets, his role in the January 6 insurrection and election interference in Georgia, his insistence that the 2024 election will be fair only if he wins—and his former chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, confirming first-hand Trump’s stated belief that veterans sacrificing for our country are losers—it’s hard seeing how anyone buys what the Disinformer-in-Chief is selling. But it doesn’t stop him or his cult from trying.

Dave Colavito lives in Rock Hill, NY.