1973 and 2004 saw the release of a film entitled “Walking Tall.” The films are quite different, but based on the same essential story, one man finds his local areas steeped in corruption and proceeds to clean it up. The clean-up is, because it’s the movies, very violent and very costly to the hero in friends and family. The movie was quite popular in ’73, mostly due to the rather inventive violence and the 2004 version helped launch Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on his movie career. Violence makes for great movies, but lousy real life. But the idea of one man (or woman) standing against corruption is one we should heed.

In the last few weeks, as the Democratic Party coup has unfolded before our eyes I have written many times about the lying on which the entire episode is built – from the actual condition of Joe Biden to Kamala Harris’ capabilities to the “process” by which she ended up with the nomination there have been lies on lies on lies.

I have mentioned before that perhaps the most important book written in the last several years is Rod Dreher’s “Live Not By Lies.” From the Amazon blurb:

For years, émigrés from the former Soviet bloc have been telling Rod Dreher they see telltale signs of “soft” totalitarianism cropping up in America–something more Brave New World than Nineteen Eighty-Four. Identity politics are beginning to encroach on every aspect of life. Civil liberties are increasingly seen as a threat to “safety”. Progressives marginalize conservative, traditional Christians, and other dissenters. Technology and consumerism hasten the possibility of a corporate surveillance state. And the pandemic, having put millions out of work, leaves our country especially vulnerable to demagogic manipulation.

The title of that book is borrowed from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who penned an essay by the same title as he went into exile from the Soviet Union. Recent events have had me looking deeper. Ran into this quote from Solzhenitsyn:

We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.

Man does that ring true – at least in the Democratic Party. It seems a long time ago now, but the Trump/Biden debate that began all of this, came with massive commentary immediately after that went along the lines of “Trump told all sorts of whoppers, but boy-oh-boy did Biden look awful.” Isn’t it amazing how rapidly the “Trump’s whoppers” meme has disappeared? Their lies so dwarf anything Trump might have said that they just had to drop it.

And so I decided to read Solzhenitsyn’s original essay. This quote says it all:

When violence bursts onto the peaceful human condition, its face is flush with self-assurance, it displays on its banner and proclaims: “I am Violence! Make way, step aside, I will crush you!” But violence ages swiftly, a few years pass—and it is no longer sure of itself. To prop itself up, to appear decent, it will without fail call forth its ally—Lies. For violence has nothing to cover itself with but lies, and lies can only persist through violence. And it is not every day and not on every shoulder that violence brings down its heavy hand: It demands of us only a submission to lies, a daily participation in deceit—and this suffices as our fealty.

And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies! Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me!

In this media age, we all have grand plans to “fix things.” All we really need do is hold to the truth, personally. We don’t need to march in the streets or pen the perfect essay – we just need to hold to the truth. We do not need the violence of a Buford Pusser, just the hold the truth.

Just hold the truth.

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