The Signs are Everywhere. An Elephant in the Backyard -- and Nobody Sees It

An Elephant in the Backyard — and Nobody Sees It

An elephant just walked through our backyard. How did you miss it?

That’s the new United States. Trump’s thievery, dishonesty, and creeping dictatorship are so obvious they could flatten the flower beds, yet somehow they remain invisible to millions. How does that happen?

To be a good MAGA, you need to build a wall around your brain. Not the kind of wall Trump never actually built on the border, but a psychological one: thick enough to keep out facts, high enough to block reality. You can build that wall with “Fake News” accusations, or mortar it together with the old standby: “He knows things we don’t.” The stronger the wall, the easier it is to pretend the elephant never came stomping through.

One trick to making reality invisible is to pack your head so full of nonsense that facts have no place to land. Fox News is magnificent at this. It doesn’t just give you a steady diet of outrage and distraction — it carefully filters out anything that might pierce the illusion. That way, you’re fed a daily feast of nonsense while truth starves outside the wall.

The Local Rumor Mill

If you think this is only about Washington, think again. Right here in Payson, I’ve been the elephant. A local politician started a false narrative that Kadizzle had been arrested twice for assault back in North Dakota. That lie was dragged into court and proven false. You’d think that would be the end of it — truth exposed, case closed.

But no. The MAGA rumor mill grabbed it, embroidered it, and set it back loose in town. To this day the false story floats around as if facts never happened. The lie lives on because once people build their wall, the truth can pound on the gates forever without getting in.

What It Really Means

This is how democracies rot. Lies aren’t just political weapons — they’re bricks in the wall that keeps reality from entering the public mind. When people refuse to see the elephant trampling their garden, they end up defending the damage as if it were a blessing.

It isn’t just Trump’s problem. It isn’t just Washington’s problem. It’s ours, in our town, in our conversations, in our own backyards.

The elephant has walked through. You can see the tracks. The question is: do you want to look?

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