The Shadow
“The truth hurts,” is a statement that has become a cliché over time.
Those who have hidden agendas disguised by rhetoric thrive on misdirection.
While living for the purpose of deceiving others, the deceivers cling to methods of operating in ways that give the appearance of being beneficial although the underlying reality of the situation is inherently harmful to those involved.
The Jim Jones mass suicide that took place on Nov. 18, 1978, in Guyana serves as an example.
Jones, a charismatic preacher who persuaded his Rainbow Family to move from Calif. to South America where they built Jonestown on 3,000 acres, serves as the proverbial deceptive leader.
Touted as a paradise on Earth, Jonestown in reality was much like a prison where nearly 1,000 of Jones’ followers were subjected to hard work. Some claimed that they were over worked and under fed in Jones’ socialist endeavor.
Tragedy struck after Leo Joseph Ryan, Jr., the representative to the U.S. Congress from the 11th District of Calif., arrived with a film crew and an entourage of reporters to investigate claims by some relatives of those at Jonestown that relatives were being held against their will.
Jones’ Guyanese supporters and henchmen opened fire on the visitors three days after they arrived by airplane, and Bob Brown, an NBC cameraman, and Ryan were shot to death along with three others.
Following the shooting, Jones led his followers to drink cyanide-laced punch, and 300 children died first among the more than 900 who committed suicide that day by poisoning.
Only a handful escaped Jones’ Peoples Temple and the Rainbow Family he had assembled to carry out his socialist idea of Utopia.
The cliché “Drink the Kool-Aid” stems from the mass suicide at Jonestown.
The cyanide-laced slaughter is but one of many tragedies that have resulted from deceivers who may be Biblically described as “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
The tragedy serves as an example of the way deception can control large numbers of people, even leading them to commit suicide to obey the directive of their leader.
President Ronald Reagan had a saying that comes to mind, “Trust, but verify.”
The way I have learned to discern the truth is to listen to what the person says, observe what the person does and listen to what others say about the person.
By comparing the three, I believe that the character of the person in question can be effectively evaluated.
If what the person says coincides with what the person does and what others say about the person, then I can count on that characterization as being accurate.
Of course, the most important of the three is what the person does. The person’s actions, to express it as a cliché, “Speak louder than words.”
If I find that the person’s words do not agree with the person’s actions and what others say about the person do not match the person’s words and actions, then to put it as another cliché, “We have a problem, Houston!”
A saying has been attributed to Abraham Lincoln, one he reportedly said during the Lincoln-Douglass debates on Sept. 2, 1858: “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”
As the editor of “Virginian Review,” I do not wish to fool any of the people any of the time.
