Prevaricator was the first big word I learned. It was a useful word for a third grader. It remains useful.
I grew up with an aunt who was known for stretching the truth. “The people at the potluck thought my pie was the best.” “Mary asked for my good cookie recipe.”
I learned her cookies weren’t the best by discovering their faint taste of rancid lard.
She was single and lonely. My family mostly overlooked her lies. Mom called her a prevaricator.
Lies crept into my childhood in other ways.
Migrant workers were portrayed as less intelligent. They came to our community to do farmwork. I believed this lie until I sat by Elisa on the school bus. She was in my class. She wasn’t that different from me. She told me how her family traveled, how they picked peaches in Georgia, and spent winters with her grandma in Mexico.
Elisa wasn’t dumb. She wasn’t mean. Maybe she was poor, but she was rich enough to get me a birthday present.
The migrant putdowns were lies.
In school, I learned Indigenous people were barbaric, then I met Kathy, whose blood linked her to the Cheyenne tribe. Her view of history was different.
How do we view Indigenous People? Do we celebrate Columbus Day, as our president declared, or Indigenous Peoples’ Day? If we choose the later, does that make us WOKE and arrogant, or is calling people WOKE simply a lie meant to divide us?
We seem to live in a world of lies.
Was the so-called big Beautiful Bill, which cut SNAP, restricted childcare, and narrowed Medicare, while providing generous tax cuts to corporations, really that beautiful?
Who benefited from Vice President JD Vance’s claim that Haitian migrants were eating dogs and cats? Trump embraced his story even though the truth of his words tasted rancid and lacked evidence.
Are people from Somalia garbage, as Trump claims? Would you think so if you sat next to a Somalian on the school bus?
Recently, we learned that seeing is not believing. We looked at the same video of Jonathon Ross shooting Renee Good and saw different things.
After the terrible killing in Minneapolis came the sorting of lies. What happened? Who is even aiming to tell the truth?
If it’s on TV, does that make it true?
Donald Trump claimed that Renee Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense.” (https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/minneapolis-ice-shooting-video-trump-vance-9.7038446) Is that what we see?
Vance claimed, “the reason this woman is dead is because she tried to ram somebody with her car… You have a woman who aimed her car at a law enforcement officer and pressed on the accelerator. Nobody debates that.” (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/vance-says-death-minnesota-woman-killed-ice-was-tragedy-making-rcna253063 ) Is Vance stating the truth?
Ed Ross, father of the shooter, talked about his son. “He’s a committed, conservative Christian, a tremendous father, a tremendous husband. I couldn’t be more proud of him.” (https://nypost.com/2026/01/09/us-news/jonathan-ross-ice-agent-who-shot-renee-good-in-minneapolis-heres-what-we-know/
How does killing fit into Christian faith when Jesus told us to love our enemies?
Becca Good, Renee’s wife, told Minneapolis Public Radio that “Renee was a Christian who knew that all religions teach the same essential truth: we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole.” (https://www.mprnews.org//renee-goods-wife-releases-statement- )
Can both be examples of faithful Christians? How do we know when our thinking has become muddled with disinformation?
Can we find ways to work together that empower us to sort truth from lies?
We deserve to have prevaricators called out.
We can start by asking if we need to own Greenland for the world to be secure, or is that a line a prevaricator would say?
Jane Yoder-Short is a regular guest columnist from Kalona.
This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Prevaricators and the lies seem to be taking over | Guest Column
Reporting by Jane Yoder-Short, Special to the Press-Citizen / Iowa City Press-Citizen
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