Disinformation, Misinformation, and Flat Out Lies

need some type of update. Um. I decided to basically stare at a wall because I found that more entertaining, interesting and informative than listening to a grift ass lying motherfucker. But let me say this what really has gotten me as I woke up and read all of you know, the headlines and seeing how the media once again is going to fail the American people in terms of the type of coverage that they're going to supply Donald Trump with. You know, we shouldn't be here, right, we shouldn't even

be in this place. And why shouldn't we be here? Oh? I don't know, because we should have a Department of Justice that is a run by a person who is invested in creating a justice system that doesn't have multiple tracks, right, meaning that if you happen to be wealthy, white male and cists and a former president of the United States, that you get to go track yourself on easy Street where nothing touches you. The road is made of teflon

and all as well. It doesn't matter what crimes you've committed. It doesn't matter how boldly you have proclaimed those crimes. It doesn't matter if you have said out loud find me eleven thousand, six hundred and some odd votes. It doesn't matter that you have created companies that are basically shell operations to scam people out of an education, out of money, that you can do whatever the fuck you want.

We shouldn't be in this position because we should have a Department of Justice that two years, almost two fucking years since this motherfucker sent thousands of people to kill his vice president of the United States, that he let armed insurrectionists into a rally and then pointed them in the direction of the Capitol Building, that he wouldn't be able to announce his presidency because he would be in jail, he would have been under indictment, he would be fending

off right, not just federal investigations but he would actually be fending off several indictments, right, so he wouldn't have the time, the space, or the place to be able to announce a third attempt at running for office. But

that's not where we live, right. We live in America, where whiteness is beyond the best currency that you could possibly ever have, Where wealth right essentially wraps that you know, skin in every different kind of defense, bulletproof, teflon tool that you could possibly have, Where you can say whatever you want, you can do whatever you want. You can be accused of multiple cases of sexual assault, you can be accused of grifting, you can be accused of inciting

a riot, and all of these things. And guess what, Because you're white, and you're well healthy, and your siss and you're famous, you get to run for president of the United States. Not only does Donald Trump continue to pose an absolute threat to our democracy, right, not only do his words essentially fall on the ears of people who are so trigger happy, right that they pose with their ar fifteens, right, that they are so trigger happy that they actually put up target practice with the faces

of members of Congress. That they are so trigger happy that one of them went and broke into Speaker Pelosi's home and violently assaulted her husband with a hammer. Donald Trump shouldn't just be in jail. He should be under a jail with a fucking muzzle over his mouth, because that is what actual justice would look like in this country. That, you know, attempting to overthrow the government, attempting to incite an insurrection, attempting to steal an election, breaking the emolument's clause.

I mean, the list fucking goes on and on and on. But Donald Trump is walking free. Oh I'm sorry. He also stole a boatload of fucking documents that you know, pinpoint nuclear intelligence and agents and all of these things as well, but still friends close to two years to the anniversary of the insurrection, and Donald Trump is free to announce that he is going to run again, to

try and run again our country into the ground. Now, what I find most interesting is this a couple of things right, One that Donald Trump's own daughter, Ivanka Trump, you know, the only one that he actually likes, wrote this on her Instagram following the announcement of the twice impeach criminal ask President her father on Instagram. This is

what she wrote, I love my father very much. This time around, I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family. I do not plan to be involved in politics. While I will always love and support my father, going forward, I will do so outside the political arena. I am grateful to have had the honor of serving the American people, and I will always be proud of many of our

administration's accomplishments. Would one of those accomplishments be putting children in cages? Well, one of those accomplishments having had over four hundred thousand Americans die of COVID nineteen because your father lied about how contagious and serious the virus was in order to stoke up fear and weaponize a virus. Is that one of the accomplishments. Is it running the Department of Education into the ground. Is it potentially having

tweeted us into war with Iran? Is it embracing white supremacists so that they felt like they had a leader in the White House? Which one of the many accomplishments do you think that Ivanka Trump is pointing to? And we know exactly what Ivanka Trump is doing, because she's the brightest of the batch of idiots that are the spawn of the Trumps, and that is creating an arm's length of distance between herself and her twice impeached criminal ass president father, right that she don't want to get

roped up wrapped up in this that you know. Of course, there's no real investigation that's going on with her husband and how he managed to score two billion dollars from Mohammed been Alam, the Saudi Prince, following his exit from the Trump administration. Could it have anything to do with, Oh, I don't know, the myriad of files that you know

Donald Trump was hiding at Mara Lago. Could it have anything to do with the access that MBS was given to the I don't know, entirety of the United States because he had the president and Jared Kushner in his pocket. But there's no investigation that's really happening. They are nothing of Nope, because again, why straight siths wealthy? You know, you get to run shit and everybody else has to duck and cover. I'm just so fucking tired, right, I'm

just I am. I am so tired of the media and their lack of investigation and interrogation, their lack of coverage that actually lays bare the facts of who Donald Trump is. I'm so fucking tired of people twisting themselves into knots and contorting themselves so that they don't offend the far right, so that they don't offend Donald Trump. I'm so tired of the chicken shit bullshit out of our fucking media that is supposed to be right about

informing the public. They're supposed to be a check and balance. I'm tired of us embracing liars. I'm tired of no one being held accountable for anything that they fucking do, so long as they are white, so long as they are straight, so long as they assist and connected to powerful people. I'm tired of it. Merrick Garland has failed the American people because Donald Trump should have never been given the opportunity to announce a fucking run. It's like,

what are you doing? And then I have people that have the audacity to tell me on this failed social media app Twitter that, oh my god, do you want it done faster? Do you want it done right? Bitch? Are we swimming in molasses right now? Are you fucking dumb? Do you know how quick black and brown boys and men are picked up on the street and charge the

book thrown at them for the smallest fucking offenses. And you're telling me that we have a laundry list of offenses in criminal activity that Donald Trump has done and ain't not one fucking indictment rollout since that motherfucker left office. That is bullshit. It's bullshit and an absolute travesty and a miscarriage of justice for our democracy. You want to know why our democracy is still at risk because we

architects of the insurrection are still running around free. Because you have Clarence Thomas who is still voting to deny access to phone records and rightfully doing so, because nobody has opened up in an impeachment inquiry into him and his fucking involvement with his insurrection. As wife, I'm just sick of the bullshit, y'all. Like it is exhausting. And that's why I'm so grateful for my next guest and the conversation that we have around the importance of truth

and integrity and character. Doctor Lewis V. Baldwin has written a book entitled The Arc of Truth, The Thinking of Martin Luther King Junior, and in this book is what many have said is the definitive volume on Martin Luther King Junior's understanding of truth. And I want to read you just a little bit about what this book is about and why we should be reading it, particularly in

this time. Martin Luther King Junior said and wrote as much or more about the meaning, nature, and power of truth as did any other prominent figure in the nineteen fifties and sixties. King was not only vastly influential as an advocate for and defender of truth, he also did more than anyone in his time to organize truth into a movement for the liberation, uplift, and empowerment of humanity, efforts that ultimately resulted in the loss of his life.

Draw on King's published and unpublished sermons, speeches, and writings, The Arc of Truth explores his lifelong pilgrimage in pursuit of truth. Ultimately, King's significance for humanity is not only his contributions as a preacher, pastor, civil rights leader and world figure. He was and remains equally impactful as a theologian, philosopher, and atheists whose life and thought evince and enduring search

for and commitment to truth. I can think of no better time to have a conversation about inevitable truths, about the truth of who this nation is, the truth of the dream that America is and was supposed to offer to all of its inhabitants, and how doctor Martin Luther King's dream for humanity cannot be realized when there are

alternate realities that people are existing in. So the conversation that I have with doctor Baldwin today is about the threat that our democracy is under because of disinformation, misinformation and flat out lies that have taken hold in the hearts and minds of tens of millions because of Donald Trump and Trumpism. Can we get back to a place

of shared truth. That's a question that I asked doctor Baldwin. Next, folks, I am very excited to welcome to woke f Daily for the very first time doctor Lewis Baldwin, scholar and author of the book The Arc of Truth, The Thinking of Martin Luther King Junior. Doctor Baldwin, we are living in a really perilous time in this country in terms

of our relationship to the truth. Yes, can you talk about why you think that we are in this crisis and how the lessons the lessons that we can learn from doctor Martin Luther King, Junior and his relationship to the truth. Yes, I think there's always a mental problem

in this country with us coming to terms with truth. Certainly, I'll use an example, I'll fail you to come to terms with the sad, painful and uncomfortable truths about our history, particularly as that relates to the treatment of people's of color, communities of color. And there's always Doctor King understood this that our entire during our entire history, we've had a problem coming to terms with truth. And I think what we see today as a product of that in political circles.

Because actual facts, objective truths, scientific facts no longer figure significantly in public discourse and certainly not in political discourse. Scholars are writing today about the post truth age, an age in which there is a breakdown of the old standards and true additions as they relate to truth and

truth telling. And doctor King grew up in a family in which truth was considered a supreme value, and throughout his public life he told us repeatedly that the struggle involved essentially coming to terms without truth about ourselves, living up to our self evident truths as expressed in our founding documents. So he taught us a lot about the power of truth and truth telling. And he also taught us a lot about the moral obligation to speak truth

to power. And that's why I think doctor King is relevant in these times when truth and facts seem to no longer matter. You know, at the beginning, I would say of the Trump presidency, America was introduced to a term called alternative facts. By at that time, Kelly Ann Conway said, do you have facts, and you have alternative facts? And in the media, in the media, folks laughed, right, and they and they they thought that that was funny.

That would be a very crucial moment I think for our political consciousness and our understanding of what should be expected from our political leaders. How do you think that the media and I would say political scholars in general, kind of failed in that moment. Something that was presented as serious they laughed off. What should we have done instead? I think there should have been a response from religious leaders, from where I'm meaning politicians, and from the general public.

Because when the term alternative facts was used, it was obvious at that time that the direction that we're trending in of course was not good that we were moving further and further away from a truth telling culture and to a point where we no longer lived in the same reality. And I think that is the problem today. So many of us live in different realities, and it's hard to get people to a point of reality when

they're not living in the same reality. And I think we've allowed conspiracy theories, lies, disinformation from the highest levels of our political life to shape public discourse in this country. And unfortunately, we have hood much from religious leaders in terms of will pushback. We haven't heard much from politicians who who have moral sensibility. They have not done much

in terms of pushback. And of course, unfortunately, those of us in the public square have not only celebrated figures who engage in anti truth telling and conspiracy theories, we have rewarded them in so many instants, and that I think is problematic. How do you see the disinformation that doctor King was wrestling with in the nineteen fifties and sixties and the disinformation that we are wrestling with now. Because Doctor King was called everything outside of his name

right by white supremacist, racist leaders. He was called a liar, he was called an extremist. He was called all of these things. And yet it was during a time when we had three major news stations that we all watched, we had the same radio programs that we all watched, now decades later, that misinformation and disinformation is pervasive, and how how do you how do you see how we

how we deal with it? Because America, in a lot of ways, um if I'm not mistaken, has been based on a lot of lies about our founding, um so, and how we are developing from that lie. It's very difficult to um live truth when you've never lived truth.

That's been the problem in this country. The founding fathers, of course, said in the Founding Documents that they are certain self evident truths that we hold dear, and we've lived throughout our history with those self evident truths, often referring to them that all men have created equal, They're endowed by their creator with certain inhalenable rights that among

these life lived in the pursuit of happiness. The problem is that we've spoken of these truths in theoretical terms, in terms of ideals and spoken words, but we have never lived out those truths and acted properly on those truths, and this is what doctor King was trying to get

us back to. He was trying to get us to the point where these truths are no longer expressed in our public discourse and our political discourse, but that they become a part of our lives and the way we act in the world, the way we treat each other as as citizens of this country. So doctor King, I think, not only an authority when we speak to these issues.

He's a resource. He's an inspiration, I think, because he taught us always that truth matters, and I think we had a point now where we have to reclaim that. One of the things, one of the things that I find incredibly troubling myself a former educator, is this desire now to ban books, to go to go back to a place where we are banning books and narrowing curriculum to guard white children from the truth about their ancestors.

What do you make about again, this push for disinformation by shielding particularly white children from learning the truth about this nation's finding It goes back to what I said a little earlier in terms of this failure to come to terms with certain truths about our history and our heritage and you're right. There's a national campaign of eratia

and book banning going on now. Almost two thousand books have been banned, and of course the argument is that white children will be hurt psychologically in terms of their own self identity and self esteem. But I think doctor King was right when he quoted Jesus. It is the truth that will set us free. I'd lies and I think those who are involved in this national campaign of eratia and book banning, they think that they can protect future generations by hiding satan truths and satin facts about

this nation and nation and its history. But that cannot work. Again. It is the truth that will set us free. And I think in this society, which is a democratic society claims to be rooted in representative and participatory democracy, people should have the freedom to read what they want. Children should have that kind of freedom because only then can

they learn the truth. Doctor King said that only truth can lead to a better understanding of humanity, to a better understanding of life in the world, to a better understanding of who we are as a people and as a nation. Has there been in your in your time of study, writing and reflection, Doctor Baldwin A country that has wrestled with their history in a way that has preserved, I guess, the sense of patriotism, but through the lens of honesty. That has happened to some extent in Germany.

You we all know what happened during the World War two era with the rise of Hitler and Nazism and the slaughter of Jewish people in parts of Germany. There have been attempts on the part of religious leaders and others to come to terms with that ugly, uncomfortable and painful side of their history and to live on a high with the vision told a higher human ideal and a higher ethical idea. So that has happened to some extent, but in this country there's never been an effort, and

I think doctor ingland right. Such an effort should be led by religious leaders, an effort to bring this nation, to bring us all to a kind of reckoning with our history and our heritage, even the ugly, uncomfortable and painful side of that history and heritage. But that's been

a failure to do so. And hopefully now with the recent election, we have hopeful signs that there are voices emerging that will will compel us to look seriously at our history, at who we are, and to come to terms with that history, and to recommit ourselves to the highest ideals of this country as they relate to the fulfillment of certain self evident truths. Doctor King was not an old man when he was assassinated. He was actually

quite young. And we love to believe in this country that our battle with the civil rights movement was eons ago, when it was just close to sixty years ago, that there are young people who remember Jim Crow, who remember segregation. Do you think that we have put too much distance in terms of a timeline in our understanding of how much or how little America has grown and reckoned with its quote unquote original sin, that we like to pretend that it was so long ago, when in all honesty,

it really wasn't. And is that a part of also us erasing that element of truth that's true, that's right. It speaks to our tendency to forget. We believe a lot of us entirely in American exceptionalism, and we've long felt that if you really believe in American exceptional exceptionalism and you're patriotic, then you're going to leave the ugly side and the painful side of that history aside and focus on what is positive about us and about this

nation and about our history. I think there's been a failure on the part of institutions in this country to keep alive that history of the Civil rights movement and what it was about, because the Civil Rights Movement was really about forcing us to come to terms with truth about who we are. And our churches and our schools and our community centers and other institutions and society have failed to consistently teach that history and to stress the

importance of that history. So when children and youngsters are not learning that history of this entire nation, the history of the Civil Rights movement, then there's a tendency to forget. And I think what we are seeing today in this national campaign of erasia and book pointing is to force us further away from the truth about this nation, the truth about our history and heritage. So yes, I see that failure in our society today, and it's occurring at

all levels of society, among all groups in society. It raises ethnic groups who are not teaching history as it should be taught. Doctor Baldwin, what gives you hope in this moment of time, this reckoning that we are living in in America, because it is not America's first reckoning, right,

and I doubt that it will be the last. Yeah, So what what gives you hope and faith that we will at some point, maybe not in either of our lifetimes, but at some point actually realize the fullness of not only Doctor King's dream, but the founding Father's ideas of a true democracy. Yes, I have hope in part because I believe deeply in what Doctor King said. He said often that truth crushed to earth will rise again, that truth always prevails. A lie cannot live forever, and I

tend to believe that myself. I also think that there are certain hope for signs that go in our society to day. One. Of course, the recent election election denies us lost large margin. The ers of this country rejected the big lie, a lot of lies about the election, about the voter suppression. Those lies were rejected, The conspiracy theories all rejected in our most recent midterm elections. That too,

gives me hope. I think that most Americans are beginning to realize that we cannot continue to live in an anti truth telling culture, that we need to reclaim truth as a supreme value. Not only reclaim truth, we need to elevate and cherish truth and also demand truth. Otherwise we cannot continue to sustain ourselves on a basis on the basis of a firm foundational, moral, and spiritual values. I think we're beginning to realize that, and of course

that gives me hope as well. And the last question for you, what are you hoping that folks take from from your book The Ark of Truth? What are you hoping that that readers who have heard have been taught about Doctor King take from it during this time in particular, I would say first of all, that the search for truth is a lifelong quest. I think we all need to realize that we have to if we're moral and rational beings, we engage in truth as a lifelong pursuit.

And this was true about Doctor King. And I think the second thing I would say is that we need to learn from doctor King that truth is not simply about the study of ideals or spoken words. It's also

about how we live and act in the world. Doctor King talked a lot about using truth for means, the truth for means of nonviolent direct action to achieve the truth for ends of the beloved community, and we need to always understand that truth is important in terms of getting at truth, that we have to live it, we have to act on it in order to bring about a better society. Doctor Baldwin, I thank you so much for making the time to join us on wok app,

but also for your leadership and your writing. Folks. The title of the book is The Arc of Truth, the Thinking of Martin Luther King Junior. Doctor Baldwin, thank you so much for your Thank you so much. You raise great questions. Thank you, thank you. That is it for me today, dear friends on woka app. As always, power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.