In Privilege Lies No Truth(Steven W Kimball) Prologue: For too long we have allowed personal bias instead of facts to become the arbiter of truth, the need for power to override the need for empathy, and misplaced trust to override logic. It is not religion, race, or even political affiliation that divides us. It is the inconvenience of truth!
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In what may be considered the golden age of democracy, we the governed have acquiesced to the superiority of privilege we have so willingly bestowed upon our political leaders. Treating them not as fellow Americans, but as Kings and Oligarchs. As in the parable, “The Emperor has no clothes.” we refuse to state that which is obvious to all who choose to see it. In propagating the lie we also voluntarily discard another idea which is key to our democracy. The idea that all men are created equal! As in the time of our great Civil War we have again proved to the world we are incapable of holding this truth as self-evident. It is upon this fulcrum of disgrace our democracy again teeters, not by division of north and south, left, and right but instead upon that which has always divided us, truth, and falsehood.

We are left to stare confounded upon the events of each day and to ponder the root of our divisions each night. Choosing not to recognize the unspoken failing of which we have struggled since our beginnings. One with a mortality higher than COVID-19 and for which we continually attempt to treat only symptoms. Without exception it lives at the heart of our political disputes, whether immigration, health care, wages, equal justice, or other. Our parables, religious script, and historical reference incessantly hint at it. Quotes such as “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” or "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" come to mind. Though the words are indelibly burnt into our memory the underlying sentiment of selflessness, equality, and truth continues to elude so many. And so, they continue along their path, compassionate in word but not in action, capable only of altruism within their own familiar and tightly woven circle. A circle constructed not of blood but of like mindedness. Incapable of seeing those outside the circle as themselves. The outsiders become them, they, those, the other; believed to be ill informed, different, lazy, unrepentant, and undeserving of inclusivity. The circle becomes their country and those within, patriots all.

Basking in the hearth of a reality of their own creation, surrounded by a wall built of lies and reinforced by misinformation they defend the indefensible for they see it not as such. Believing no defense necessary when taking back what they feel was involuntarily taken. That which they seek to reclaim unifies them as it is unique in as much as it may be possessed simultaneously by the rich among them as by the poorest of the poor. It is privilege in all its forms and by all its sources! Only obtained by bringing disadvantage to another and inherently incongruent with the idea that “All men are created equal”.

In one voice they cry foul for among privileged, not one shall claim to be. Query not whether they be supremacist, nationalist, racist, or other, for these are but our interpretive conclusions not theirs. They are the contributors, the laborers, the builders, the deserved, the entitled. They are the makers, not the takers. To infringe upon this birthright is an incursion upon that which made America great! For them, through this lens and this lens alone does the world come into focus.

As the bewildered outsider we observe their machinations with intense scrutiny, incapable of seeing that which lies beyond each visage. A border wall as manifestation of the invisible protective barrier erected around their privilege. The display of gestures, flags, and weapons as symbols of the grant of it. An act of insurrection as an exercise of the right of advantage over any who may cast doubt upon it or any of their number.

This is the legacy we have wrought. In rectification we must act with clarity of purpose to once and for all denounce in word and action the idea that anyone for any means is above another and to restore truth as the catalyst of our actions. Only then may we restore the faith so eloquently expressed in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”!

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