Reality check

This cartoon was originally published on Pepperspectives. Click here to subscribe to Pepperspectives, where you’ll learn about the continuing threats to our democracy and the actions you can take to help safeguard it.

Donald Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, last Friday after BLS turned in a revised report stating that the United States lost over 200,000 jobs during May and June. While Trump and his cronies try to justify the sacking as just eliminating a person who was bad at her job, we all know the truth: Trump is pissed that reality is clashing with his own blustery narrative, and fired the messenger.

This action is straight out of the authoritarian playbook, which he keeps on his nightstand next to The Art of the Deal and Mein Kampf. Authoritarians keep control by shaping the reality of their subjects, regardless of the facts. Trump is desperate for the world to see that he’s an economic genius, when in reality he’s a bankrupted grifter who has bullied, lied and cheated his way to the top. He’s a moron who is counting on other morons to prop him up. Facts are an inconvenience to his reign.

Before working on this cartoon I skimmed through my dogeared copy of 1984. Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s novel, works in the Ministry of Truth where he rewrites old newspaper articles that are contradicted by new realities. Big Brother and the Party must be seen as being correct at all times, facts and reality be damned. Orwell, via Winston, muses on how authoritarian regimes bend reality to their will by controlling the narrative:

“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed — if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth.”

But as I write this, I can’t help but think of another fictional character and her warnings against the death of truth. In Andor season 2, Senator Mon Mothma addresses the Imperial Senate and rightfully accuses Emperor Palpatine of manipulating facts and lays into her fellow senators for going along with it. Describing the words written by Tony Gilroy and the performance by actor Genevieve O’Reilly won’t do the speech justice, so I encourage you to give it a watch:

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