When Truth Takes a Holiday

The following is the latest column by my wife, Rabbi Rose Lyn Jacob, from The Culpeper Star-Exponent:

There is a kind of immunity that can’t be put into a syringe to keep us safe. I call it “Heard Immunity” – as in that Motown 70’s hit, “I heard it through the grapevine.” Heard immunity works to make you sensitive to the hearsay, misinformation, rumors, lies and gossip and the unsubstantiated “truths” that spread faster than any variant of Covid. As Winston Churchill said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on!”

You probably played the game “Telephone” as a child, the game where you whisper a phrase or story into the ear of the person next to you, and they pass it along. By the time it makes it to the end of the line, it bears little resemblance to the original, true message. Today, we no longer spread information in hushed tones. News outlets, political pundits, internet sources, political groups, and fundamentalists blast it twenty-four hours a day. “Pizzagate,” “Q-anon,” unfounded accusations of the trafficking children and reports of thousands of criminals pouring over our southern border, and the ever popular “Jews control the media, banks and government,” are just a few examples of the kind of hearsay, rumors or gossip that spread like wildfire.

I place the blame for today’s fascination with the conundrum of WHY Americans are having trouble with the truth, squarely on the shoulders of a young George Washington, who, rumor has it, said, “I cannot tell a lie, ‘twas I who chopped down the cherry tree!” No doubt he set the bar too high. Others set the bar lower, or as they ask in the dance, The Limbo, “How low can you go”? Let’s see.

Celebrity Lies; Lance Armstrong – “I never took enhancement drugs”, Pete Rose – “I have never gambled”, Tiger Woods – “I’m faithful,” Paris Hilton – “I don’t do drugs.”

President Richard Nixon; “Truth is America’s most potent weapon. We cannot enlarge upon the truth. But we can and must intensify our efforts to make that truth more shining.”

President Bill Clinton; “But I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never.”

Vladimir Putin on Ukraine; “It's our land, it's our country, we don't have any other option.”

President Donald Trump Tweet; "I WON THE ELECTION!”

To quote Mark Twain, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.”

As we’ve seen, through this week’s coverage of the January 6 insurrection, the nation's “conspiracy versus truth problem” fomented the attack on Congress, shook the foundations of Democracy and got good people killed.

Conspiracy theories, that is to say rumors, hearsay, and misinformation, arise when people become worried or threatened; when there is a crisis or when important things happen that they want to make sense of. They take root and thrive in conditions of uncertainty.

So how do we keep sort through the massive amount of information thrown at us on a daily basis? I’m not sure, but we have a moral obligation to believe only what we have researched and for which we have gleaned sufficient evidence. As the Special Committee for the Investigation of January 6 clearly shows, in testimony after testimony, our beliefs influence our actions. That is, we behave based on what we believe to be true. And careless believing based on un-truths, leads to poor actions, and may ensnare others who “believe” because of you. Once that happens, it is just a hop, skip and a jump to conspiracy theories, “fake news” -one of my least favorite expressions, and being used and manipulated at great cost to our Democracy and our fellow Americans.

There is a a Jewish value that we try to instill in our children, to inoculate them against the fear of inaction in times of difficult moral decisions. We start early, and never stop saying it, no matter how old “the child” is. It is the admonishment to be a Mensch. The best translation I can give you is: “In a place or time where there are no persons of moral character, YOU need to be that person of character.”

Truth. It is our moral obligation to pursue it. It is our moral obligation as Americans because, in the words of George Orwell, “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

Cats and Traps

The Sad Case of Woodward Hollow

I’m a trapper. I trap cats, get them neutered, and return them to wherever I got ‘em. It’s unethical, and generally unlawful to not return a cat to the place where it was trapped. Either the cat is owned by someone, or it’s feral, in which case it falls under the Virginia prohibition on relocating wildlife.

My group has been trapping in Woodward hollow for weeks. When the Woodwards see us coming, they bring as many of their cats inside as they can. Their cats are scrawny, and survive on scraps and dead animal carcasses that Mrs. Woodward dumps on the porch. The cats have to get by on what the dogs leave behind.

When we spay a cat, we keep her overnight to make sure she’s OK, then release her the next morning. I hadn’t done the hollow in a while, but last Friday I took two females back for release. Rather than get too close to these crazy people’s house, I parked in the cul-de-sac, and unloaded my two traps. When the doors were opened, the cats weren’t especially interested in leaving, but eventually they walked out into the street, but went no further. One cat, a pretty light gray lady, turned around to look into the other trap. Spotting a half full food dish, she went back, cleaned it out, then walked back into her original trap.

Having a cat walk back into its trap is very unusual. It’s most common for all released cats to run away immediately. Neither were so inclined. I coaxed them both out and put the traps back in the truck, expecting the cats to head on up their driveway. But they tried to follow me into the truck. The light gray one put her front legs around my right leg and looked up at me.

I talk to cats: “You need to go home now.” She wasn’t impressed. “You can’t come home with me. I have no place for you, and you belong to someone else.” She wouldn’t let go. I freed myself and brought out more cat food from the back seat. Both cats sucked it all down. One ran off, but the gray cat stayed, her front legs again wrapped around my leg.

Freeing myself, I headed for the cab; the gray cat followed. “They treat their cats like trash.” An older lady had stepped into the cul-de-sac. “That cat doesn’t want to go home,” she said. “I see. But they have to.” “They don’t know that.” “I have no other home for them.” The gray cat had wrapped her legs around my leg again; she was trying to climb my leg.

The lady shook her head and led the gray cat away, guiding her up the dirt driveway to her home. A few feet up the driveway the cat looked back at me, but the lady nudged her back in the direction of home.

Later on, I thought, shame on you. Shouldn’t have done it, but too late. Maybe. I told the story to another trapper. She’s hitting that place next week. Just maybe . . . Undoing sins of omission aren’t easy.