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Will we ever get the truth?

To the Editor,
23423061_web1_201112-NTC-Letter-editor-keyboard_1

To the Editor,

In I, Claudius, Robert Graves is speaking through Emperor Claudius, as him writing his memoirs.

When Claudius comes to the eight-year reign of Caligula, who Claudius succeeded after Caligula was murdered, he hesitates, “What comes now is so fantastic and unbelievable,” Claudius pauses then he stiffens his spine, “But, no! I will tell it all, no matter what the consequence.”

Now, Robert Graves’ account of all of this has been brought into question. There are historians who point out that when Caligula started out, he wasn’t such a bad ruler. The same has been said about another much maligned ruler — Nero.

But no matter who tells the tale, Caligula’s descent into psychotic madness comes to the fore.

His naming his horse to the senate was the least harmless act among the incidents of murder, robbery, etc., that marked the latter half of Caligula’s chaotic rule! Caligula was eventually assassinated by a member of his guard and Claudius took over.

Speaking of the truth and nothing but…, written by reporter Tom Zytaruk, mentions that Shakespeare wrote in Measure for Measure, “Truth is truth to the end of reckoning.”

Of course, “If we all paid more heed to the truth — priceless and indefatigable as it is — rather than imposing our own muddied, muddled and self-serving versions of it,” Zytaruk wrote, “the world would not be in the dire state of confusion it finds itself in today.”

Well essentially this is right, but remember that the movie Rashomon, by the great Japanese director Kurosawa. In it, four people witness the same event, yet each relates it completely differently.

So the question here is: Who is going to tell the story of Donald Trump and his four years of president of the biggest economy on the planet?

For those Trump supporters, it would be a tale of opportunities gone, paradise lost!

For the rest of us, a flashback from a really bad acid trip — a world in which anything other than what Trump acknowledged to be true was “fake news,” no matter if it appeared in the New York Times, the Washinton Post or on MSNBC. If it didn’t square with Trump’s version of reality, it just wasn’t so!

So once again, I ask, who will recount the madness that was and still is (although that’s rapidly running out) Donald Trump?

The truth — the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That’s what we need. But will we get it?

Dennis Peacock

Clearwater, B.C.