SURVIVAL OF THE TRUEST

The phrase appears in a passage in the book, The Stark Munro Letters, by Arthur Conan Doyle, written in 1895 and one of his many novels not featuring Sherlock Holmes. In it, a young doctor talks about his friend and partner who has quite a vivid fantasy life and comes up with some wildly unrealistic schemes. This passage immediately brought to mind the political campaign just ended three days ago. It also comes in the midst of a lot of Republican and conservative recrimination. 

Billionaire donors are complaining that the Romney campaign lied to them about his chances to win, and that Karl Rove--who as George W. Bush's famed "architect" certainly knew the trend and demographics were against a Republican victory for the presidency or the U.S. Senate, but took hundreds of millions of dollars from them under false pretenses. And ordinary voters are lambasting Fox News for skewing the truth in just about everything they said in the final weeks of the campaign. In other words, a huge "Liar, Liar, Pants of Fire!" to almost all Republican pundits and politicians.

Here's the passage as it was written over a hundred years ago:

The future wilt decide which of us is right. The survival of the truest is a constant law, I fancy, though it must be acknowledged that it is very slow in action.

In the spirit of compromise and conciliation, I offer this suggestion. Let all of us of a progressive and/or liberal persuasion, reach out to those we might perceive as being on the other side with understanding and empathy. We should all appreciate how tough it is to be lied to consistently and persistently by institutions you have come to trust just because they appear to be in political agreement with you. This has certainly happened in the past from the other side, though arguably the lies were much more flamboyantly blatant this time around. Or maybe not--a historian has pointed out that during his campaign, our 4th president, James Madison, was accused of pimping out Dolly in exchange for votes.

It's a good time for healing, forgiving and forgetting. Gullibility is not a crime--and if it were, most of us would be under arrest from time to time. 

So, my conservative friends, let me remind you that there are some pundits on your side who had it right, who understood the truth and told it. People like David Brooks, and Joe Scarborough, Kathleen Parker and Peggy Noonan were sometimes called Rinos by the far right prevarication machine, but "truth-tellers" would be more accurate. And Olympia Snow and even young Megan McCain. They may not be as sharp-tongued or occasionally witty as Krauthammer, Hannity, Coulter, et al--but neither did they lead vast numbers of believers into shocked humiliation, or make millions at the expense of the duped.

Jerry

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