Donald Trump recently told supporters that he expects to be reinstated to the presidency by August. And at a QAnon-linked conference, his pardoned former aide Gen. Michael Flynn acknowledged, when asked, that this “should happen” through a Myanmar-type coup, a threat he later walked back, though it’s a belief that QAnon followers have been promoting for months.

Earlier, it was reported that there are defendants charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection who “blame election misinformation and conspiracy theories, many of them pushed by then-President Donald Trump, for misleading” them (“Defense for some Capitol rioters: Election misinformation,” May 30, Page A10).

“I kind of sound like an idiot now saying it, but my faith was in him,” one defendant said, speaking of Trump.

Then, in earlier counterpoint on May 12, Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy stated, “I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election.” What?

It’s one of the hardest things we do as human beings, admitting we’ve been wrong about a thing, about anything. Classic psychotherapy says we’re the heroes in our life productions, and any lessening of that status is too diminishing, too hard to embrace, and we behave accordingly, obstinately.

But sweetly sometimes, the truths in the face of a stand we’ve taken opposing those truths become too much to bear or contest; and the acknowledgment of having actually been wrong about someone, or something, allows a greater light of truth to enter our consciousness, engaging politer and friendlier discourse and the nation’s, everyone’s, gain.

Paul Baribault
Lewiston

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