MOULTRIE, Ga. —

Dear editor:

One might ordinarily wait until a new administration has had enough time to get their legs under them before making judgments about policies and directions, but in one specific way the new administration’s start was so disastrous that an immediate response should not only be allowable, but required. 

Yes, the president’s supporters might say the administration got off to a good start with the president’s signing executive orders supporting their favorite issues, but those signings were completely submarined by the inept fumbles of Sean Spicer, the Press Secretary, and KellyAnne Conway, one of Trumps senior advisors and apparent “explainer-in-chief.” 

Spicer is an experienced hand in dealing with the press before national audiences. That did not stop him on Saturday from making a juvenile, ill-timed attack on the press’s reporting of the size of the inauguration crowds.

 In the first place, crowd size on Saturday was hardly a key issue given the positive events the White House wanted covered. Secondly, Spicer’s comments were the thin-skinned equivalent of a baby throwing a tantrum; one would hope for more maturity in the White House. Thirdly and most importantly, in support of his position on crowd size, Spicer said things that were patently not true. That’s where the trouble really began. 

 Asked about Spicer’s comments on Sunday, Ms. Conway vacuously said Spicer was using “alternative facts.” One wonders if Ms. Conway knows the history of “alternative facts.”  Political figures and parties have infamously used alternative facts for centuries to promote their programs or views.

 The alternative facts can be of at least two kinds: 1) lies not really meant to be believed, just accepted by supporters because they punch a hole in the opposition, and 2) lies put out with the expectation they be believed because all sources of the truth are being suppressed. 

 The Leninists, Stalinists, Maoists, and their ilk have used both kinds of “alternative facts” for nearly a century, of course, but for a clear statement of a policy that enables such usage Joseph Goebbels, Adolph Hitler’s propaganda minister, is most famous.  He said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. …. It thus becomes vitally important for the state to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” 

Keep telling the lie, keep insisting on “alternative facts” because repetition brings belief; and suppress public access to the truth, which, as a practical matter, means inhibiting evaluation by a free press.  

Sadly, the Trump administration seems to be showing an unhealthy tendency in those directions. Let us hope this penchant for alternative facts will be no more than a temporary embarrassment for an administration our entire country depends on; but for that to be the case, our hope will have to be ourselves, not an administration who believes the facts are whatever they say they are.

Terry Turner

Coolidge