Authenticity – That’s All She Wrote

Do you know what we ALL really want in 2024? Not more fakeness, not more artificial intelligence, simulated foods, counterfeit brands, manipulated news, photoshopped blogs, or robotic dogs. Not more untested vaccines, non-GMO beans, Orwellian words, misapplied pronouns, men in girls’ swimsuits and gowns, invented genders, drug vendors, robocalls, function gains, or algorithmic political campaigns. We want authenticity. We want leaders, sometimes even neighbors, to get real.

We want “say it like it is,” be who you say you are, “man up,” and be eager to be held accountable. We want people in leadership who take responsibility for their actions, are other-regarding, service-oriented, magnanimous in victory, honest in their errors, and able to be real politically and personally.

We want those entrusted with the power to make good on their word, care about it, care about truth, and solvency, have some self-respect, then treat others with it, stop dishing blame, playing the victim, playing period. Is that too much to ask?

Missing across the political spectrum, obscured by false claims of virtue and villainizing, is what people really crave – straight talk, open conversation, honest debate, the right motivation, and some humility.

Instead, year after year, compounded by complicit media and laziness in social media, we get leaders who deceive and mislead, misuse power, make off with illicit profits, and justify it all by demonizing others.

Frankly, while deceit, greed, dishonesty, and the lure of senseless self-admiration have always been attached to politics, we are a country that has also enjoyed the opposite, those who come to keep government limited, the Constitution real, “ship of state” afloat, do their turn in the wheelhouse, then step down.

We have had leaders like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams at the founding, then Lincoln, dutiful governors and generals as we fought and recovered from the Civil War, men of iron character like Theodore Roosevelt when needed, earthy candor like Truman, soaring hopes like JFK and Reagan, and on the private sector side people who risked everything for America.

What have we now? A Congress, President, Attorney General, Secretaries of State, Homeland Security, Transportation, Treasury, Health and Human Services, Energy, EPA, and even Defense, who knowingly bend the truth, make false statements about where they get their money, what they are doing, what they are not doing, and just walk away, as if the government was invented for their manipulation.

And who finally pays the price for all this garbage, graft, and gimmickry, bills in tens of trillions that the nation cannot pay, money these people spent that belongs to our grandchildren, but is now gone?

Who pays for the moral bankruptcy, the unnecessary inflation, the witless electrification, the high interest, open borders, rising terror, exploding crime, demoralized police, and reckless foreign policy?

Who pays for the eroding defense from readiness to recruitment, and for stripping Americans of their birthrights, free speech, worship, gun ownership, security in their homes, privacy, and other rights?

Who pays for these abuses? We pay. We, the People, pay. How? Our trust in what we hear, read, and are fed by those in power falls, and with it trust in government. Doubt grows about the future.

If 2024 means anything, and it should, it means this: Americans are sick of being taken for fools, by their elected leaders, national media, and all who push fake narratives, condescension, and abuse.

This year will be unusually important, at the outset and as it progresses. This year, we will – as a people – either insist that things like truth, honor, courage, accountability, and honesty matter, or we will give up.

We will either conclude that falsity is not us, fakeness does not cut it, those in power are done because they abused our trust, have lied one too many times, and we are not they, or we will become them. If past sacrifice, sacred traditions, our Constitution, and integrity have meaning, we must make it so.

In short, more than one party, one region, or grousing plurality is thinking this way.  Americans are sick of the duplicity, public corruption, and fakeness. This year’s election will not be about slogans or ethnicity, as much as fairness, respect for truth, and authenticity. As they used to say, that’s all she wrote.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.