Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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“A day which will live in infamy.”
Every American knows that Dec. 7, 1941 — the day that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and signaled the United States entry into World War ll — is a day to remember not only the carnage of that attack but the ensuing battles that followed in the ultimate triumph of good over the evil of Nazi Germany and its Axis partners.
Not every American is convinced that Jan. 6, 2021 — and the days preceding it and the many months that have followed — is a day far more critical to the survival of the United States of America than that fateful day more than 80 years ago.
And this inability for America to come to terms about what really happened on Jan. 6 will continue until Republican leaders can muster the courage to tell the truth to their constituents.
I am reminded of the punchline to an old joke that asks the question: Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?
Otherwise decent and honorable Americans have taken leave of their senses, mostly their common sense, and have chosen to believe that which is not true. In the face of what is demonstrably seen and heard, too many people have chosen to believe that the truth is false and that falsity is relative — relative to what they want to believe in a world that does not exist.
It is hard to account for this other than to look back through history at others who have believed the big lie — to the brink of near total destruction.
Humans are capable of deceiving themselves. They have the ability to rationalize almost anything, even the irrational. But always — always — there have been people unafraid to stand up, be counted and count themselves among the few with the courage and the determination to tell the people the truth they need to know.
Right now America’s future hangs in the balance between the truth and the Big Lie. And I am not sure which direction our democracy will go — given the incredible numbers of Americans who refuse to believe what they see and hear and know to be the fact.
Today, as we acknowledge the worst attack on American democracy since, well, forever, a majority of Republicans tell pollsters that, basically, Jan. 6, 2021, did not happen and the election was stolen.
Or, if it did happen, that it had nothing to do with Donald Trump’s supporters seizing the U.S. Capitol to prevent lawmakers from certifying the election of Joe Biden as president of the United States. It was an election rout that he won by more than 8 million votes.
And, fully one year later, no one, no facts and no resort to common sense can change their minds.
I am reminded of those few words we all typed — yes, there was something called a typewriter — to test our manual dexterity skills. “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.”
Today, those words have to be a test of good citizenship because it appears that nothing short of an intervention by good men and women coming to their country’s aid will stop what is an inexorable slide into anarchy.
That is the reason this newspaper declared early for the 2022 elections that any person seeking our endorsement for their candidacy to lead in this state must unequivocally tell the voters that the 2020 election was not stolen from Donald Trump. He lost it fair and square! And that Joseph Biden is the duly elected president of the United States.
And dare we have to reaffirm what our eyes have seen and our ears have heard in real time — that it was Trump’s people who stormed the U.S. Capitol, resulting in death, destruction and the rending of the fabric of our democracy — but state the obvious we must.
That is the reason it continues to perplex me that a man like Sheriff Joe Lombardo continues to hide what he knows is the truth from the very people who must hear it from someone just like him.
Lombardo earned the trust of the voters when he was elected Sheriff of Clark County. He is squandering that bond between himself and the citizens of this state by refusing to speak the truth in some cynical ploy to hoodwink the Trump cult long enough to win the primary and then come clean for the general election.
Political gamesmanship may be tolerated in our cynical society when the future does not hang in the balance. Today, however, it is imperative that every patriotic American stands up to speak the truth. By his silence, Lombardo is complicit in the damage being done daily to our democracy.
Lombardo may be afraid of his voters — yes, that is the reason for his egregious act of omission — but that is not a trait of a good leader.
He owes Nevadans the truth.
And so do those national GOP electeds who at first decried Trump’s Big Lie and now embrace it. When courage is in short supply, truth becomes the victim. The Big Lie has allowed the hateful, violent and un-American fringes of society to be normalized. For how much longer can our democracy withstand this attack from within?
What began as a national effort to destabilize our democracy has, since the insurrection on Jan. 6, moved into the local arena. Threats of violence at school board meetings, registrars offices and in the front yards of elected leaders have become the norm across the country. It is incumbent upon all of us to stop this ransacking of our democracy.
A good place to start is with the man responsible for law and order right here in Las Vegas. Sheriff Lombardo owes it to the residents of Clark County, at the very least, to speak the truth and speak it now.
The Big Lie is just that — a big, fat lie. Come on Joe, say it ain’t so!
Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of our country. And there is no time to waste!
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.
