The Partisan Fog Enshrouding the Truth

[XLFD]

On the night before a dramatic regime change in the United States, we urge media and citizens who depend on politically-stilted resources to do their own fact-checking before they present their political opinions based on faulty premises in front of everyone else.  A recent letter from a local triggered our inner editor, and inspired us to write this piece and publish it to show how fake narratives have divided our country, and why we should never publish such misinformation unless your only desire is to establish your credentials among those in your echo chamber or obfuscate the greater truths. 

Social media companies that have employed fact-checkers to better control their content (or their overall narrative) have recently reconsidered their stance, with Meta's Mark Zuckerberg noting recently that they have destroyed more trust than they have created.  Before this, Elon Musk has done his best to support the First Amendment with X (formerly Twitter).  Our local newspaper appears to feel the same way about its own on-line content as they recently shared a letter from Deborah Yonick of Hamlin Township in the paper an on their website, that threw out a lot of whoppers and unsubstantiated claims in trying to make its various points.

Truly, many of us across the political spectrum have had a hard time over the last five to eight years especially of figuring out what is the truth and what is a particular narrative.  Ms. Yonick appears to be an avid listener to media that has a decidedly left bend and assumes that what she has been fed is the gospel truth.  To be fair, there are several people from the other political side who won't let the truth get in the way of a narrative supporting their views, but they rarely get their letters published in the leftward tacking paper of record for Ludington, what we affectionately call the COLDNews, and if they are there's a fair chance any non-factual assertion will be fact-checked by the editor.  

We present the following letter scribed by Deborah Yonick, footnoting the first six paragraphs with false or misleading statements (italicized) with a number, but leaving her opinions intact, many of which appear to germinate from a falsified narrative she accepts as fact.  At the end, we link to websites that disprove or logically call into question her statements.  We appreciate that her first paragraph was error-free, but it does get worse.  

"On Jan. 6, 2025, Congress convened in a joint session to certify the results of the 2024 presidential election. It took all of 36 minutes for Vice President Kamala Harris to preside over the peaceful transfer of power, a stark contrast from four years ago.

Prior to 2021, this constitutionally mandated responsibility of Congress, to count electoral certifications from the states and certify the results on Jan. 6, went unnoticed [1].

But the lies of a boorish loser inspired a violent mob that day to storm the Capitol [2]. The world watched Trump-clad supporters scale walls, battery-ram [3] doors, pepper spray and beat police officers, and erect a noose to hang VP Mike Pence[4].

Let’s not forget the 45th President told the crowd to march to the Capitol knowing many were armed [5]. Then he watched the attack on television and did nothing to stop it for over three hours [6]. Five lives were lost [7], 140 police officers injured, and Trump plans to pardon convicted rioters, many of whom had prior records of violence [8].

For the past four years, Trump has sown mistrust in our elections, with no evidence [9]. His lies put election officials in harm’s way [10] and made it challenging to recruit election workers [11]. But just like that, the rigged ballots he was preparing his faithful for if he lost, vanished with his win [12]."

FOOTNOTES:

[1]:  At least 5 other elections had top officials claiming the election was stolen, and several disputes started during certification of the electoral votes and even beyond, notably 1824.

[2]:   "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."  Nothing in Trump's speech urged the use of violent measures. 

[3]:  She likely means 'battering ram', there is no such thing as a 'battery ram' or any verb, as it's used here.  I'm still ignorant as to what Trump-clad' means.

[4]:  The people constructing the gallows, built at 6:30 AM on Capitol grounds in the presence of Capitol police and left up for 26 hours, have not been tracked electronically or pursued by the feds, indicating they were likely fed operatives.  That could be disputable, but there is nothing proving the gallows-makers were Trump supporters building it for Pence.

[5]:  Nobody were told to bring any or flashed any weapons at the Trump rally that day, and even NPR admits that among the rioters, no guns or knives were among them.  

[6]:  Trump's tweet history shows he first told his supporters to remain peaceful and respect police at 2:36 PM, this was less than 90 minutes after he concluded his speech.

[7]:  No police died on January 6 as insinuated.  Five of the people involved died that day.

[8]:  Only 2 in 9 J6 defendants had any prior police record, likely meaning a single digit percent had ever been guilty of a violent crime.

[9]:  To date there has been plenty of evidence that elections were not secure in 2020 or since and several convictions 

[10]:  We looked but could find no instance of an election worker who was put into harm by Trump's words, lies or not.

[11]:  There was actually a general surplus of poll workers in 2024, with many progressive media sources decrying that Republicans were infiltrating the ranks.

[12]:  We could find no evidence or resource that indicated Trump was engaged in such vote-rigging.

The rest of the letter doesn't get much better, with research and a survey from the liberal think tank group, the Brennan Center, being presented as reliable source material.  If Ms. Yonick's goal was to change minds of independent and COLDNews' readers, the use of such a source won't usually sway them, much like a conservative writer using research and surveys from the Heritage Foundation to support their claims won't.

That foundation wrote Project 2025, frequently misattributed to Trump during the presidential campaign, who was actually pushing his own policy in Agenda 47, which was always left alone by the other party, likely because of its more populist appeal.  

The rest of the letter primarily focuses on election integrity issues, and why Ms. Yonick thinks 80% of voters are wrong in their beliefs in thinking that voter ID is a good thing.  She bemoans the fate of several Michigan bills in the lame duck session controlled by Democrats called the Voting Rights Act.  As you might expect, the bills would have not given voters any more rights, rather they would make elections less secure and more prone to frauds and schemes.  Even some Democrat state congressmen understood that the VRA would take much of their power from controlling election policy and put those into the hands of the two other government branches.

If Ms. Yonick's idea was to elevate her bona fides among fellow progressives in the area, she likely accomplished that feat by saying all of the right things, even when most of the stuff she wrote was demonstrably false.  Yet it is highly unlikely that she converted any independent-minded thinkers to her way of thought, and likely just amused anybody on the right side of the political spectrum. 

One thinks that Ms. Yonick would not have written this letter just to entertain her political nemeses, so if our gentle readers decide to write their own missives to their local newspaper expressing their political opinion, please take your time to do the research so that you don't automatically disqualify yourself as a credible source by making a dozen errors in three paragraphs.  The letter finishes:

"Yet the election denial movement he spawned morphs on. As Reuters reported Dec. 2, state and national Republican legislators, who amplified Trump’s rigged election claims, are pushing for stark changes to how Americans vote before the 2026 midterm elections.

The end goal: create new rules to cement their electoral advantages and lay the groundwork for discrediting future election results if their preferred candidates lose.

Democracy is not reasonably secure if we have a major political party uncommitted to accepting legitimate electoral defeat.

Just to underscore, the research is consistent that voter fraud is rare and almost never occurs on a scale that would affect an election outcome, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

While our elections proved resilient this time, political scientists Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsk with the Brookings Institution write: “The electoral road to breakdown is dangerously deceptive. People still vote. Elected autocrats maintain a veneer of democracy while eviscerating its substance. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are legal in the sense they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts.”

Trump’s Project 2025 seeks to undermine voting rights, proposing to stop the federal government from countering election conspiracies and restrict its role in promoting voter registration, while allowing it access to state voter rolls and weaponizing the Justice Department to politicize election administration.

In Michigan, the legislature’s lame duck session failed to pass the MI Voting Rights Act that would’ve codified protections against voting discrimination, strengthened access to the polls, and ensured all eligible voters their freedom to vote.

The new Republican majority is ignoring the will of Michiganders who voted in 2022 for a constitutional amendment expanding ballot access. They’re proposing a new amendment asking voters to reverse course and accept a requirement of proof of citizenship to register to vote, despite scant evidence of significant voting by illegal immigrants.

The GOP’s proposals disproportionately burden U.S. citizens eligible to vote, notably low-income groups, young adults, elderly, disabled, and communities of color, who are more likely to lack a driver’s license or have an ID that may cause voting difficulties.

Nearly 21 million voting-age citizens (9%) do not have a current driver’s license, according to the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement. Another 12% (28 million) have a non-expired license, but it does not have their current address or name.

A 2024 Brennan Center survey found that 21 million U.S. citizens of voting age don’t have ready access to documents proving their citizenship like birth certificate, passport, or naturalization papers.

Not lost on many of us are the 4 million people disenfranchised to vote due to a felony conviction, while Donald Trump, convicted on 37 felony counts, is our 47th president."

As we are less than a day before Donald Trump takes office, and less than a day after a heartbreaking loss by the #1 ranked Detroit Lions in the football playoffs, we hope for her mental health that she wasn't a Lions fan