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Fraud depends on facts to prove the accuser’s case.

Everyone has the freedom to believe what they want. At home, in a bar, on a ball field, in the stands, at church, wherever we gather people can tell each other their beliefs and call them truth. A 10,000 year old planet, angels dancing on the head of a pin, dead people voting, mailboxes stuffed with ballots, all of these can be true in a person’s or a congregation’s mind. Folks are entitled to hold on tightly to any belief and take it to their graves with them as gospel.

Anyone can tell their own heartfelt tales. They can call them sacred truth. But in our larger society verifiable facts are the currency of the realm.

In the larger community, especially among people you do not know, truth is a different animal. Whether on a farm field, while constructing a house, buying medicine at the pharmacy or teaching children in school, what is true is what is verified by the facts, counted, measured, proven.

Farmers cannot sell half a load of potatoes and call it a truckful. A roofer cannot leave without all the shingles secured and call the job done. One hundred pills is one hundred pills.

No football coach ahead at halftime says he won. He will not do that even at the two minute warning. No baseball manager ends the game at the seven inning stretch.

If life was a game, it would still depend on rules. Our everyday mantra is embracing the rule of law. It is not supposed to be a cliche that we are a nation of laws and not of men. Even when one man, say a Henry David Thoreau, stands against the state, he details his case to the world. Ronald Reagan asked Walter Mondale “Where’s the beef?” So, President Trump, where’s the fraud? Typing the word FRAUD in all caps and sending it out on

Twitter does not a case make.

There are rules, laws and social norms. There is honor and pride.

There is fairness and decency.

There is a time to put up or leave the field in defeat. Saying you are a winner does not make it so.

There is a reason we tell the tale of the boy who cried wolf. It is for a purpose we recount the story of the emperor’s new clothes. But it is not the boy or the emperor who is the focus of either story. The moral in each case is about the villagers, the larger society. We are meant to learn from fables to help us make better real life decisions.

Who is in danger if we believe the boy, applaud the naked emperor?

These tales, fables and thus fiction, provide a larger truth. What is the truth behind President Trump’s tale? Where are the facts to back him up.?

Proving fraud depends on facts.

We need a nation of worthy, not needy presidents. We need leaders and followers, both, who respect their opponents as fellow citizens and care for the nation as much as they want to be cared for.

This is not about Trump. It is about every citizen.

It is time for those who support the president to support the nation more, and first by getting the facts out for all to examine.

One more tale to recall is that of the Pied Piper. He led an entire people astray. The children followed him out of the village and were never heard from again.