O

ver 
Winter 
Break, 
I spent a few hours 
researching 
possible 
careers 
in 
journalism. 
Columnist for The New York 
Times, reporter for The Wall 
Street 
Journal, 
fact-checker 
for The Washington Post — I 
skipped past examining the 
third. 
A 
career 
analyzing 
politicians 
and 
trying 
to 
decipher the truths from the 
lies sounds like torture. It’s 
not just speechwriters fudging 
the 
numbers 
or 
candidates 
exaggerating 
anecdotes 
anymore: the lies are bigger, 
and so are the consequences.
How 
can 
one 
reconcile 
election denial with the facts? 
What additional context can one 
give to the claim that women 
aren’t the only ones giving 
birth? The truth is a noble, 
difficult pursuit. The truth is a 
responsibility. One that few will 
bear, least of all those in power. 
Both parties have embraced 
their own unique fictions, more 
encompassing than any single 
false 
statement 
or 
extreme 
issue. 
Our 
partisan 
divide 
has grown, and two separate 
realities have emerged, each 
lived in by their respective 
sides of the political aisle.
Former 
President 
Donald 
Trump (just President Trump, 
to 40 percent of the country) 
has announced yet another 
bid for the Oval Office. His 
declaration of victory in 2020 
was more than just deception: 
it was a cancer, with tumors 
manifesting 
themselves 
as 
rioters storming the Capitol 
Building 
and 
armed 
thugs 
posted up next to ballot drop 
boxes in Arizona.
And yet, most Americans did 
not embrace Trump’s lie, or the 
other crazy policies adopted by 
his ideological successors.
Roe v. Wade was overturned, 
and the country read tragic 
stories of teen pregnancies 
caused by rape and reckoned 

with the proposed laws that 
would 
see 
them 
forcibly 
brought to term. Meanwhile, 
many Republicans, such as 
Tudor Dixon, rallied behind 
no-exceptions abortion — based 
on the lie that it is morally right 
and necessary for a victim of 
a brutal sex crime to have her 
assailant’s baby.
Any reasonable doubt about 
climate change has been put 
to rest by concrete scientific 
consensus, but congressional 
Republicans refuse to act, and 
some even refute the evidence 
entirely. Lingering questions 
about the role of guns in mass 
violence have been answered 
by a series of never-ending 
shootings, and yet Republicans 
still 
blame 
mental 
illness. 
Mental illness can’t open fire 
on a crowd of bystanders.
Then the midterms came. 
The political center said “no” 
to 
falsehood. 
Democrats 
performed 
shockingly 
well, 
holding the Senate and nearly 

holding the House. But this left 
turn merely substituted one 
false narrative with another, 
and Americans know it. Biden’s 
low approval rating and the 
success of more mainstream 
Republican 
candidates 
in 
typically blue districts, such 
as 
Mike 
Lawler’s 
victory 
over U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick 
Maloney, D-N.Y., the chair of 
the Democratic Congressional 
Campaign Committee, in New 
York’s Hudson Valley race, are 
indicative of a nation disgusted 
with both parties.
LSA 
freshman 
Julian 
Hernandez 
explained 
his 
thoughts to The Daily: “I feel 
like in some cases such as 
economic policies and foreign 
affairs, there is a ‘black and 
white’ between the right thing 
and the wrong thing to do. 
However, with other issues such 
as abortion and (its) morality, 
I find the increasingly radical 
stances of each party deeply 
troubling.” On many of the most 

important 
issues, 
especially 
democratic and cultural issues, 
the two parties have embraced 
opposing extremes, and they 
pay the price with moderate 
voters.
In key swing states, Trump’s 
handpicked 
screwballs 
lost 
seats for Republicans because 
most Americans wanted to put 
2020 behind them. Despite 
liberals’ unpopular positions on 
crime and radical positions on 
gender theory, the anticipated 
Red Wave evaporated because 
Trump showed independents 
an even scarier reality.
“Democracy cannot survive 
when one side believes there 
are only two outcomes to an 
election: either they win or they 
were cheated. And that’s where 
MAGA Republicans are today.” 
President Joe Biden said in a 
speech.
Democrats 
ordained 
themselves 
the 
party 
of 
democracy. They were playing 
make-believe.

MAGA Republicans are not 
the only ones to lose without 
grace. Jan. 6, 2017, while less 
climactic and damaging than 
Jan. 6, 2021, saw objections to 
the certification of more states’ 
presidential votes by House 
Democrats 
than 
by 
House 
Republicans on the day of the 
insurrection four years later.
Trump’s defeat made election 
denial a larger menace, but it 
did not invent the dangerous 
mentality from scratch. 
In 2022, Democrats made the 
threat to democracy a top issue. 
Publicly railing against the Big 
Lie, they privately fueled its 
growth by supporting Trump-
endorsed 
election 
deniers 
in the primaries, hoping to 
face weaker candidates in the 
general. Trump’s crony John 
Gibbs 
won 
the 
Republican 
primary 
in 
Michigan’s 
3rd 
congressional 
district 
after 
liberals 
spent 
$400,000 
advertising 
his 
highly 
conservative beliefs.

In places where Democrats 
already had power or recently 
took it by propping up far-right 
maniacs, they govern from 
their own reality.
Crime rises, and they fight 
to defund the police. The 
city of Portland gutted their 
police budget by $15 million 
and suffered a 65% increase 
in homicides. Even Mayor Ted 
Wheeler, a Democrat, conceded 
that as a result of the killing, 
“many Portlanders no longer 
feel safe.” But the more typical 
liberal response has been to 
downplay the problem.
In 
the 
recent 
Maternal 
Health Guidance, the Biden 
administration has removed 
the word “mother,” using the 
term “birthing people” instead. 
The unsettled gender debate 
distracts from the pressing 
matter of guaranteeing women 
better pre- and post-natal care. 
The debate around reproductive 
rights is already volatile, and 
radical new components limit 
the 
potential 
for 
positive 
motion. 
Most 
Americans 
rightfully support protections 
for transgender people. Many 
are weary about the speed of 
change. Sudden cultural shifts 
threaten to alienate all but 
the most progressive voters 
and require more substantive 
thought. Altering our language 
and historical understanding of 
pregnancy are dramatic steps 
that must be taken seriously.
Republicans and Democrats 
alike take nothing seriously. 
On 
democracy, 
abortion, 
climate, crime, etc., if fiction 
is 
convenient, 
then 
fiction 
becomes 
policy. 
Discussion 
is an exhausting, upsetting 
endeavor, but the alternative is 
silence.
Fiction and silence are bad 
for democracy. Finding the 
truth is hardest when passions 
are high, but at no other time 
is it so important. Americans 
want reality, and the results of 
the midterm elections reveal a 
nation that is not yet ready to 
abandon it.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
8 — Wednesday, January 11, 2023

JACK BRADY
Opinion Columnist

The land of opposing fictions

Opinion

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