Welcome to the United States of Lies

What Do You Do When the Government Just Lies?

If I could ring a giant bell loud enough for every American to hear, I would. I’d drag it into the middle of the street and pull that rope until my hands bled. Until the ones still pretending everything is okay couldn’t pretend anymore. Until the ones still hoping someone else would save us finally realized it’s us. It has to be us.

Because the government is lying. Fully. Repeatedly. Shamelessly. Strategically.

They are creating fear, fabricating chaos, and feeding people nonstop disinformation. And while most Americans still know something is wrong, far too many have stopped trying to make sense of it. They’ve been worn down. And that’s part of the plan.

ICE and DHS are releasing propaganda videos showing American cities supposedly under siege, filled with violence, chaos, and lawlessness. But the footage isn’t new. It’s from 2019 and other moments during Trump’s last term, like scenes from Chicago years ago, repackaged and pushed out as if they’re happening right now. As if the country is collapsing and the only answer is more control under Republican leadership. Kristi Noem is helping drive the campaign. She’s not just amplifying these old videos. She’s standing in front of cameras and outright lying. She recently said, “No American citizens have been detained.” But that’s false. Over 170 U.S. citizens have been detained by ICE. Many held for extended periods. And yet the government continues to look us straight in the eye and say none of it happened. This is gaslighting on a national scale. It’s psychological manipulation, and it’s designed to destabilize the truth. To make people doubt their own memory. Their own judgment. Their own country.

Sadly, it’s working. Not on everyone, but on enough. Enough to do real damage. And the rest of the world sees it too.

This week, Congressman Mike Waltz stood in front of the United Nations and tried to defend America’s embargo against Cuba. In an extraordinary moment, the Cuban Foreign Minister interrupted him mid-speech and called his remarks “uncivilized, crude, gross, and lies.” Imagine that. Cuba, calling out the United States for dishonesty on the world stage. And being right. That’s where we are now.

So many lies are told daily, so much disinformation loops endlessly, that it’s easy to forget why they’re doing it in the first place. But then I heard Governor JB Pritzker speak, and suddenly it all snapped into focus. He wasn’t just talking about policy differences. He was talking about something darker. Something more sinister. He revealed that the Trump administration hasn’t just cut SNAP benefits. They’ve disabled the SNAP machines themselves. The ones people use to buy food. So even if states found the funds to reload benefits, it wouldn’t matter. The cards wouldn’t work. The machines are off.

That’s intentional starvation.

They are taking food out of people’s mouths and then blaming Democrats for the empty tables. And why? So billionaires can keep getting tax breaks. So the wealthiest can hoard more while the rest fight over scraps. Your tax dollars, meant to serve you, your neighbors, your community, are being stolen to line the pockets of men who will never miss a meal. This isn’t broken government. This is stolen government.

It’s kleptocracy. Rule by thieves. And Trump is their king.

He doesn’t want to help us. He doesn’t want to protect us. He doesn’t even want to lead. He’s terrified the Epstein files will come out. He wants revenge on anyone who’s made him look small. He wants to continue diverting spending that benefits the American people to himself and his uber-rich enablers. And he is more than willing to burn everything down to keep his grip on power.

That’s why he lies. That’s why his enablers spread disinformation. Because the only way to hold power while robbing the people blind is to make sure no one can see anything clearly. Confuse the truth. Distract from the theft. Keep everyone too afraid, too divided, or too exhausted to stop it.

And while people are trying to figure out how to pay for food or medicine, he’s still playing the same game, lying about the very problems he caused.

Tonight, he posted this:
“OBAMACARE IS A DISASTER! Rates are going through the roof for really bad healthcare!!! Do something Democrats!!!”

But let’s tell the truth. He’s the reason rates are going through the roof. He cut the subsidies that helped families afford coverage. He did that, not Democrats. And let’s not forget the promise he made over and over again when he was campaigning for his first term. He said he had a plan to fix the healthcare and insurance industries. He said it was “coming in two weeks.” That was ten years ago. There was no plan. There was never going to be a plan. Because he never cared.

That’s not leadership. That’s dictatorship 101.

And if that wasn’t enough, he also posted this tirade today:
“He is a CRIMINAL AND SHOULD BE IN JAIL. A MAJOR LOWLIFE AND FAILURE. An ugly person, both inside and out! I beat him badly, and love watching him squirm now.”

He said that about President Biden. A man who beat him in a democratic election. A man battling cancer. A man who, for all his flaws, still believes in the institution of this country. Trump can’t handle that. He can’t stand the thought that he lost. Or that someone else might be seen as more decent, more grounded, more respected. So he lashes out. With pure, bitter cruelty. This is the President of the United States. A position that used to mean something.

But he’s not just a child having a tantrum. He is a powerful, unstable man with an army of loyalists who will defend him at any cost. He is not some fringe figure shouting into the void. He is the head of a party that has abandoned restraint, rejected facts, and is now fully committed to authoritarian rule in everything but name.

Once upon a time, presidents respected each other. Even when they disagreed. Even across party lines. There was dignity in the transition of power. There was an understanding that the presidency was bigger than any one person. But those days are over. The lines are gone. Trump isn’t just violating norms. He’s demolishing the very foundation this country was built on. And he’s using lies to turn his base into something far more dangerous than voters. He’s turning them into foot soldiers, ready to help him dismantle the very fabric of our country and our Constitution.

This is how it happens. A slow, intentional decay of truth. We don’t even have to imagine how this ends. We’ve seen it before. Because history doesn’t just echo. It warns.

It happened in Nazi Germany, where Joseph Goebbels, Germany’s propaganda minister, perfected the art of state manipulation and said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” They built an entire reality out of fiction. They blamed the vulnerable. They glorified the strongman. And they used repetition as a weapon until truth had no oxygen left to breathe.

It happened in Stalin’s Soviet Union, where history was rewritten to whatever best served Stalin. Political opponents were disappeared from photographs and from life. Stalin engineered man-made famines through brutal agricultural policies, then turned around and blamed the suffering on the people themselves. He stole their food, then told the world they were starving because they failed. And now, in America, we’re watching Trump do something eerily similar. Slashing SNAP benefits. Shutting down the systems people rely on to access food. Then pointing fingers at Democrats while families go hungry. At the same time, he’s trying to buy loyalty from farmers with hollow promises, while quietly gutting the very infrastructure that supports them. The same playbook. Create the pain. Shift the blame. Rewrite the story.

It’s happening now in North Korea, where the lies are so cartoonishly absurd. Leaders who never defecate. Who shoot perfect golf games. Who live forever. And yet no one dares question them. Because when you control all the information, even the most unbelievable claims become reality. Not because they make sense. But because no one is allowed to say otherwise. We’re already watching Trump do the same. Insisting he’s never lost an election. That he’s stronger than ever. That anyone who challenges him is fake, disloyal, or treasonous. It doesn’t have to be true. It just has to be loud and repeated until resistance feels impossible.

It happened in Mussolini’s Italy, where fake military victories were paraded through the streets while the country was hollowed out from within. The people were told they were strong and triumphant, even as the economy crumbled and fascism crept in. The illusion was the point. The show of strength was a mask for failure. Trump is using that same mask. Boasting about power. About winning. While mass layoffs are spreading across the country. Industries are collapsing. Workers are being discarded. But you wouldn’t know it from listening to him, because his entire message is projection. A failing economy wrapped in the language of strength.

It happened in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, where elections were staged, opposition was silenced, and truth itself was treated like a threat. The public was expected to applaud while their rights were stripped away. Refusing to clap wasn’t just resistance. It was danger. And now Trump is copying even that. This year, he threw himself a military parade on his birthday. A failed, embarrassing spectacle modeled after authoritarian regimes. He wanted the show of strength, the tanks, the soldiers, the applause. Because his ego demanded it.

We know how this goes. And yet here we are again.

So what do we do?

We show the pattern. These lies aren’t random. They’re not isolated. They escalate. They serve a purpose. Trump lies to control. To cloud the air so no one knows which way is up.

We name the system. This isn’t normal dysfunction. This is a government that no longer serves the people. It’s not just dishonest. It’s predatory.

We make the consequences personal. These lies are why your neighbor can’t afford insulin. Why your cousin lost her SNAP benefits. Why your local library shut its doors. Why a kid down the street is going to bed hungry while billionaires collect government contracts.

We teach people how propaganda works. It’s not magic. It’s repetition. Scapegoating. Flooding the zone with so much chaos that the truth can’t breathe. But once you know the playbook, once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. And that’s power.

And we reframe the urgency. This isn’t politics as usual. This isn’t an election between two personalities. This is the unraveling of shared reality. The dismantling of the rules that hold this country together. The longer we wait to push back, the harder it will be to find our way back.

I still believe it’s not too late. We can survive this difficult moment for our country, but it is going to take all of us to break the pattern of disinformation once and for all.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather