“Well it’s hard enough to hear
Harder still, to move beyond this fear
We know there’s nothing I can bring,
So tell me what do you want from me?”
“Let It Go” — Tenth Avenue North

Christian music fans were disappointed in 2021 to hear that Tenth Avenue North would no longer be performing, after two decades recording and touring together. The song cited above was part of the group’s first studio album, “Over and Underneath,” released in 2008.

The album earned the group New Artist of the Year at the 2009 Dove Awards. While the album did have two No. 1 songs, “Let It Go” did not chart.

The song is written from the point of view of a person who is at a point of struggling to find their own identity.

Attempting to “white knuckle” into what is expected has disconnected the person from truly living as their real self, so the song references Bible verses that encourage letting go to trust God.

Gripping so hard on to an idea that reality passes you by…sounds familiar in our state and national political scene, doesn’t it?

On Fox News’ “Special Report,” Bret Baier recently pressed former President Donald Trump on 2020 election claims in an interview that aired in two parts Monday and Tuesday last week. Baier pressed Trump to give any facts to back up his claim that the election was “stolen.”

Trump continued his rhetoric that has persisted since the 2020 campaign, when he first attempted to discredit voting procedures in the country. Despite losing every court case regarding elections and even seeing that his lawyer, who continually filed the lawsuits, even after saying on record that he knew there was no truth to the suits, is facing disbarment, Trump persists.

Why?

He has told himself over and over and over that something happened, and even without any evidence, he either 1) is deluded to believe it is true and/or 2) believes that continuing to repeat it will continue to fuel others to believe the lie.

In fact, on the second point, Trump used discussion with Baier on the second night of the two-part interview surrounding his handling of classified documents to attempt to drum up donations for his legal entanglements.

Requested assistance from others for legal costs…from a man worth an estimated $2.5 billion!

He’s been taking his supporters for a financial ride for some time, and while the post is now deleted, he bragged on his self-run social network Truth Social that he garnered over six figures in donations after the interview.

More than $100,000…and it wasn’t coming from fellow billionaires. A Politico examination of his fundraising in 2022 found that in a six-month time period, Trump raised more than $300,000 through multiple different fundraising mechanisms. The majority of those who purchased his fundraising items or sent him money earned less than $100,000 as a household!

The ex-President continues to state over and over that he’s a “man of the people” and an “outsider” in Washington, D.C. However, he’s spent more in political donations in his life than more than half of the town of Huron could even hope to earn in a lifetime - combined. He IS the swamp, but he continues to tell people over and over that he will “drain the swamp” with the hope that repeating it over and over will somehow make it true, not unlike his election claims.

However, saying things in order to make them true is not exclusive to the national political scene.

Gov. Kristi Noem introduced a “whistleblower” hotline for college students and staff in the state to report concerns with the college education system of South Dakota, already widely considered one of the most conservative collegiate education systems in the country.

She trumpeted out last week a host of claims from her new line that showed that the state’s colleges are teaching “woke” ideology. She put out a press release that stated that multiple issues backing her assertion had been reported. Buried in that release was a line about how other comments were received that were OBVIOUSLY trolling.

The issue is that they weren’t trolling.

Students in the state have anonymously reached out to media members to say that they reported legitimate issues with white supremacy being taught in the state, de-valuing Native Americans being taught at colleges in the state, and even punitive action against students who put together projects that showed the 2020 election was NOT stolen.

Those calls? According to Gov. Noem, they were troll calls.

Others have reached out to other media outlets to report that they called in with fake calls that fit the governor’s agenda, only to hear their actual troll calls referenced verbatim by the Governor or her representatives when discussing calls made to the hotline that required action in the state.

In other words, Gov. Noem so badly wants the state’s education system to be an enemy that she’s willing to accept and honor outright lies and ignore those who are speaking their truth.

She has used this to push an agenda on social studies for our youth, on multiple pieces of legislation aimed at reining in the state’s colleges, and now in driving out multiple members of the Board of Regents in the state and replacing them with those who believe in the conspiracy that she proclaims.

Quite frankly, if things in this state are as bad as she consistently fear mongers, why on earth would she spend millions of taxpayer money on an advertising campaign to bring people here?!

Because it’s not as she publicly portrays, and she knows it. She - like Trump - is attempting to bring forth an alternate reality in order to legislate their own desires into being.

That is incredibly frightening and should give anyone pause. Such actions are what dictators do in order to inflict their will upon people, regardless of democratic support for such actions.

Holding on until you’re white-knuckled to a lie doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a lie. It’d serve our national and state political leaders to consider this - on both sides of the aisle.