Back when I was a child my Mom used to read us kids the story called “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. As the story goes… there was a young kid who lived in a small village who was given the job of taking the village sheep out to pasture and watching them. He was given strict instructions that if a wolf appeared to attack the sheep, he was to raise the alarm by crying out “Wolf!” and the villagers would come running to drive off the wolf.
However, after watching the sheep for awhile the boy got bored and decided to raise the cry just to see how the villagers reacted. So he cried “Wolf!” and the villagers dropped everything and came running with pitchforks, shovels and hoes to drive off the wolf. The boy thought the sight was so exciting and funny that he raised the cry several more times. Eventually no one believed him when he shouted the alarm. (You get where I’m going with this, right?)
Apparently, our new leader has read at least part of this story…
DJT seems to also delight in raising the alarm and watching with glee the excitement that ensues. He cried wolf over the crowd size at his inauguration, the millions of voters who voted illegally, the busloads of voters who travelled from Massachusetts to New Hampshire to vote, the invasion of illegal aliens, the rate of violent crime… and now the wire tapping of the phones in Trump Tower. He cries wolf, the media responds with a flurry of headlines and stories and the cable news networks spend days with panels discussing the validity of his latest alarm.
But… apparently our CIC didn’t finish the story and realize it’s not just an amusing tale for kids, it is rather a cautionary tale. For the end of the story is that the child cries wolf so often that when the day comes that a real wolf appears and attacks the flock, when he raises the alarm – nobody comes to his aid and the sheep are slaughtered.
We are less than 60 days into the Trump administration and already far too many of us are becoming deeply skeptical of his pronouncements. We have already reached a point of diminishing responses to his cries of “Wolf!” While this diminished response might please some, it poses a major danger to all. For inevitably there will come a day of real and serious danger, a day that will require a collective and rapid reaction, and we will have grown so distrustful of these wolf cries that we will react too slowly, if at all. There may soon come a day when our White House will need to stir citizens and allies to face some real and impending threat. Perhaps a hidden threat detected only through the hard work and dedication of intelligence professionals. And on that day his history of crying wolf will forestall the most critical response.
The danger here is mounting. The coin of the realm in national and international relations is “trust”. DJT’s lies are not amusing, or harmless. Nor are they simply political games, or even merely the pathological musings of a disturbed man. They are dangerous. They are corrosive. They are undermining not only his political enemies, or even our whole democratic structure. They are literally endangering the lives of every American and our allies.
We are not far from the time when no matter how pithy the tweet, how dramatic the quote, or loud the alarm, we will have stopped giving the president much credence and our normal defensive reactions will be slowed, or muted. A time when any statement made will require extensive presentations of facts before they are believed or acted upon. On that day lives may well be lost, because we no longer trust what the man in the White House says.