As I digest many current events, I find myself thinking about the word “reason.”

The dictionary defines the word as “a cause, explanation or justification for an action or event,” or “the power of the mind to think, understand and form judgments by a process of logic.”

FOX News recently paid almost $800 million to settle a defamation suit from a voting machine company.

Discovered documents, texts and emails made public clearly show FOX knew the 2020 presidential election was valid and that President Trump’s lawyers had no evidence to the contrary. 

FOX leadership also knew millions of their viewers that have the channel on their TV all day didn’t want to hear that the election was valid. So they lied, willingly participating in a fraud that goes to the heart of our democracy just to preserve their business.

Now that they have admitted this lie, it defies reason that anyone would continue to watch FOX News.

The claims of election fraud have been examined by dozens of courts, all determining there was no fraud.

Multiple states have conducted recounts, while others have reviewed their election process. None have discovered any fraud.

Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow and a leading voice protesting a “stolen” election, claimed to have data proving election fraud. He offered a $5 million award to anyone who could disprove his data. 

A Trump voter (both elections) proved the data isn’t even related to the 2020 election. An arbitration panel determined unanimously that Lindell must pay the $5 million.

If defies reason that millions of Americans still believe there was election fraud.

A former president, current members of the U.S. Senate and House and hundreds of state legislators still support the idea that the 2020 election was fraudulent – in the absence of any proof. 

This remains true after the FOX News lie has been exposed and punished with a record defamation award.

It defies reason that anyone would ever vote for any of these people again.

A Supreme Court justice has received gifts valued at several hundred thousand dollars from a wealthy Republican donor. His wife has been paid several hundred thousand dollars for her work with a conservative think tank. This justice did not note any of this on the disclosure form he is required to fill out.

This justice said he didn’t completely understand the form. He has also said someone in the past told him he didn’t have to disclose such gifts, appearing oblivious to the very simple idea that receiving such gifts might influence him to support the giver’s causes.

Why else would there be a disclosure form?

Both this justice and the Supreme Court’s chief justice claim they don’t understand how this undermines confidence in a court that is supposed to be non-political in its judgments. It defies reason that the people we most trust for the wisest judgment in our country can’t judge for themselves how this foments distrust.

One of our Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton, believed that government power should be in the hands of those few men who had the talent and intelligence to govern properly for the good of ALL the people. 

He believed the Constitution defined a form of government where citizen voters would vote for such people.

Contrary to political propaganda spewing untrue drivel and social media spreading unsubstantiated conspiracies, it IS still possible to find facts and the truth. It is our responsibility to make the effort to find facts, and be willing to challenge assumptions and political party ideology if reason based on facts suggests we should.

Many of us blame our current problems on moral decay. I would suggest a different cause: that the quality of people we are electing is stunningly poor and woefully inadequate to meet the increasingly complex challenges in our world. 

We have gotten lazy in our dependence on sound-bite data, our avoidance of serious political discourse, and our acceptance of an “us vs. them” divide created by self-serving politicians who are supposed to unite us as Americans.

When you consider some of the people we have elected, Alexander Hamilton would say it defies reason. 

I think he would also say we need to step up our game as reasoning citizens and voters.