The truth could set a whole damned society free.

 A local newspaper columnist has joined many other commentators in bemoaning the angry state of division that possesses our nation (We’re messing up our world, all of us).  He recalls a time when people with differing political preferences did not live in a state of hostility.  He notes:

There was a time in America when our disagreements were a part of our strength. We could disagree, respect each other and be united in that we each want what’s best for the greater good.

I, too, recall  a time when it was accepted as condition of life that people would have differing preferences and those differences were accepted as a fact of democratic life.  The writer, John Papendick, says, "I don’t know where we went wrong, but somewhere along the line, we messed up."  Scholars of language and communication, however, have known for some decades that good will was being supplanted by ill will in our society, and have noted some sources of the ill will.

In my own experience as a professor of English, I was certainly aware that an element of malice had taken possession of the minds of a few students.  The malice was expressed in a few student papers.  Those papers contained elements of bigoted intensity that had no place in the quest for knowledge and had to be dealt with.  At that time, I was involved in a research program on the holistic evaluation of papers.  Three professors would read each paper  and each would assign it a rating from a rubric with a quick explanation of each rating.  This was a technique to enable professors to evaluate student work with consistent criteria and provide students with full responses to their work.  

A professor who was reading a paper from my class looked up from the paper and said that it came straight from Rush Limbaugh.  I do not listen to talk broadcasts such as the Limbaugh shows, so I would not recognize where the ideas and words came from.  However, the professors discussed how to deal with such materials.  They  quickly pointed out that if the student did not attribute the words and ideas to their source, they were a matter of plagiarism, and they violated a basic rule of academic honesty.  

That was a time when students wrote argumentative papers, it became apparent much they were influenced by what they encountered in the mass media, and needed to be taught critical thinking skills in evaluating their sources of information.  In the case of Rush Limbaugh, there were a number of books published which documented many of the falsehoods stated by Limbaugh.  Students who quoted words and ideas from Limbaugh were dismayed to find matters that they cited  in their papers were disputed by fact checkers.  In the academic world, checking out the veracity of factual statements is a routine of scholarship.  But that is not true for the general population.

At this time, there is an abundance of false information and ridiculous conspiracy theories in circulation.  When decisions that affect our lives are made on the basis of falsehoods, our nation is in peril.  Stupidity can destroy us.  But malignant falsehoods are put in circulation by Rush Limbaugh and others of his ilk, and they are operating in the lives of the gullible and misinformed.  

Donald Trump awarded Limbaugh, the preeminent malicious liar, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  When an agitator of malice is given a national honor, it is a signal of a nation in deep trouble.  But it also defines the issues that divide the nation:  people of good will versus people of ill will, as typified by Trump and Limbaugh.

The division in the country is not political;  it is moral.  It is between those who believe in decency, honesty, and respect for differences and those who are willing to sacrifice moral attributes for the exercise of power over others.  Rather than wonder about the causes of the division, examine how that division is expressed.  It is usually conveyed in a statement of ill will, and often take great liberties with  the truth, if not be a total violation of it.  

If we really want to confront the division in our society, we can begin by checking the things we read and hear and pass along for factual accuracy.  The truth may be hard to handle at times, but it is a lot easier than handling lies.  And freedom from lies is the most constructive kind of freedom.