Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz

Yesterday, Donald Trump shamelessly, brazenly stood behind a makeshift podium fashioned of bricks from a Hurricane-ravaged furniture store in Georgia—and lied.

He did what he has always done throughout his time here, yet seems only fully capable of and willing to do at this point: he inserted himself into situation of grief and trauma, of unthinkable suffering, loss, and death (a place he did not belong) and he knowingly spewed untruths.

Trump claimed that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, “was having a hard time getting the president on the phone. I guess they’re not being responsive, the federal government is not being responsive,” he continued. “They’re having a very hard time getting the president on the phone. He won’t get on it.”

On the same day, just hours earlier, Governor Kemp completely refuted Trump’s claims, telling the assembled media, “The President just called me yesterday afternoon… And he just said ‘hey, what do you need?’ He offered that if there’s other things we need” (in addition to the aid and service already being provided), “just to call him directly, which, I appreciate that.”

President Biden had already declared a state of emergency before Helene even reached the shore, and aid and emergency services were already being put into place. The Biden-Harris administration had already been working with FEMA and partnering with state officials to do exactly what our leaders are supposed to do in such times.

Making Trump’s lies all the more grotesque, is that in 2017, in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew’s destruction in North Carolina, the then-president Trump refused 99 percent of the aid requested by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.

The idea that a former American president would enter into a space still reeling from a once-in-a-lifetime tragedy and weaponize people’s pain for his failing campaign is almost unthinkable, yet totally on brand for this rapist-felon-conman-grifter who lies as easily as he breathes.

And the only thing worse than those calculated, destructive untruths, is that in the heads of tens of millions of Americans who are emotionally tethered to him, they became truth. They are now a fixed and unchangeable fact for them—and this is why they cannot be reasoned with.

Trump supporters have no need for reality. They simply need to hear Trump say words and those words become their working reality, justifying every horrible thing they do and say. Just as with the nonsensical and completely fabricated myths of Haitian immigrants eating pets, his sycophantic cult of grievance will accept a proven lie as gospel.

When trying to reach another person across a divide of disagreement, it’s really difficult to compete with a firmly planted and fully thriving lie. In fact, it’s virtually impossible.

As we approach an election that will rechart the course of this nation, our most formidable adversary is not the person who is most intelligent, dishonest, or even immoral—it is the person who no longer has need of the truth; who ceases to be burdened by the existence or veracity of data in order to believe what they believe.

When someone has arrived at this place of delusion, their only pressing commitment is preserving the myth they’ve told themselves—and so their minds for all practical purposes are rendered nearly unreachable. To reach a different conclusion would involve them rewriting the false story they’ve already convinced themselves of and vigorously defended, sometimes for years.

To consider another alternative becomes a threat to their very identity, and so rather than arguing with one’s own mind, the much less complicated or time-consuming task is to simply tell it what it wants to hear regardless of whether or not it is real.

The person who has discarded truth is insulated from rationality. He or she will not respond to the presence of a cogent argument or the proffering of measurable facts. Any information not corresponding to the narrative they’ve predetermined will be immediately labeled “fake news” and quickly rejected.

You cannot win a debate with such a person, you cannot craft compromise with them, and you cannot appeal to reason—unless you are too are willing to concede to fantasy in order to reach them where they are, and this is a steep and slippery slope.

When we encounter someone whose opinion doesn’t match our own, there is great wisdom in seeking to understand the other person; attempting to see the matter from behind their eyes. But when this conclusion is reached based on fraudulent information, when he or she refuses to weigh the evidence at hand, when they chose simply to adopt the perspective of least resistance, this can be an impossibility.

And so we’re faced with the task of wrestling with some really gut-wrenching questions today:

How do we teach our children to treasure honesty, when for so many people they encounter, fundamental reality is up for debate?

How do we who claim Christianity affirm our faith tradition’s call to truthfulness, when an increasing number of those representing that tradition are no longer interested in it?

How do we engage people standing opposite from us on an issue—when they no longer seem to value, desire, or entertain factual information?

What does a country become when its leaders, responsible for stewarding reality in times of adversity and matters of great consequence—have no use for it?

How will America endure a former and possibly future President who is mortally allergic to the truth and fluent in lies?

The answer isn’t in abandoning the truth ourselves. In fact, these days require us to be a people who guard it more fiercely than ever; to keep seeking to know what is real, and to speak those things loudly and repeatedly in the hopes they will find fertile ground, even in the hardest of hearts.

I’m that afraid that reaching the tens of millions of Americans who have chosen Donald Trump’s vile fiction over actual reality may never again be an option—and that the only hope going forward may be to outnumber them at the polls.

This may be the truth that hurts the most.