Most of us know that this axiom is not absolute. Most of us have heard the late Poet Laureate Maya Angelou’s saying, “When you know better, you do better,” and most of us know people who have reversed opinions, beliefs, or even their entire lives. We know people who have learned from their life experiences and corrected their behavior.

And then there are people who are like the former President Donald Trump who repeat the same behaviors day in and day out, and we simply should know by now that what we see is what we will always get…or perhaps we will get a ramped-up version because that is his modus operandi, his way of doing things and he simply doesn’t change his core behavior. He doesn’t seem to have an interest in getting better or doing better.

Trump lies incessantly, and they are big lies that are usually unsubstantiated and sometimes harmful…not only to individuals, but to our country and our democracy.

The COVID lie was devastating, whether blatant deception or innocent omission it was staggering…I’m still confounded by his actions when I think about it. Trump knew early on that there was this deadly virus in the U.S. and remained silent…it doesn’t matter if it was malicious or ignorance. He was the President. All he had to do was tell us, “There is this thing, and we don’t know a lot about it, but it’s out there and it can be deadly…it can kill your children and parents.” What would you have done if the President had trusted us and issued this simple warning? Instinctively, I believe most of us would have done simple things to protect ourselves, our children, our community. We do it every year when there is a flu outbreak. We’re doing it now whenever we hear someone has COVID. If we had known, maybe we would have instinctively covered our faces or avoided groups of people until we had more information. But with no warning, we were like sitting ducks. How many lives could have been saved with just a bit of trust and truth? How many businesses could have survived? And this thing  that we had warning about exploded. Just a little trust in us is what we needed but it is not Trump’s nature to trust us…perhaps, that’s why he prefers to rule us. Perhaps, that’s why he and those of his ilk think they are better equipped to make decisions for us because they are wiser than us.

The election lie was huge…Trump knew he was losing and began planting seeds for the lie long before the election. For months, over and over, he dropped seeds of doubt about the election. He made changes within the Postal Service…began sewing doubt among Republicans to the point of encouraging them not to vote by mail. The only way to make sense of that is he was sure he was going to lose…he knew the devastation his presidency had caused. Then he lost…but rather than leave peacefully there was January 6^th. Imagine him sitting in his office watching what was going on and doing nothing…same think he did during Vietnam. His dad was wealthy and powerful enough to keep him out of harm’s way if he was drafted, but he chose to skip it totally. And now, he would have you believe that he did more on that day, and that members of his mob were heroes. If you really want the truth, look at what Republicans Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy, and more were saying in the immediate aftermath. It wasn’t just Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. They knew what happened, but they were more beholden to Project 2025 than to our democracy and laws. Courts dismissed more than fifty lawsuits of alleged electoral fraud and irregularities presented by Trump and allies. U.S. election security officials have said the election was “the most secure in American history.”  It was all a big lie and I think more people know that than are willing to admit to it.

But Trump’s lies don’t stop here. He created an entire social network to lie, harass, and denigrate the sitting President…this is unheard of.

There is another adage that comes to mind “ Action speaks louder than words. When Trump left the White House, he took thousands of classified documents. He was repeatedly asked to return them and did not. The American people  don’t know what was taken or what has not been recovered…neither do we know why they were taken. What we do know is that the former President has done everything in his power to keep us from knowing the what and the why. That is telling, perhaps even more telling than the cases he has been found guilty of committing. Yeah, yeah, he’s such a victim…remember “Lock her up.”  No, America is the victim, and the Conservative Justices on the Supreme Court just sealed that deal!

Y’all know we could go on all day with this but we’re not going to do so. You get my gist…and you’ll likely get another round as well. 

We are still a democracy! We the people still have a non-violent say in where we go from here. With the rhetoric coming out of the GOP, who knows what will happen if Trump loses again? I do know if he loses, our democracy wins!