“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John reports Jesus telling his disciples that. Knowing and following the truth is good advice in all times from whomever is advising it.

This is a time of people embracing truths shared among friends, neighbors and co-collaborators: “My truth” and “our truth,” are shared certainties between allies. But in the larger, civil society – in the realm of facts and laws and newspapers, what served as “your” truth or “our” truth does not always hold up where facts and measurements and courts of law are the final arbitrator.

Folks can continue to call for counting all legal votes, but they were counted. That statement implies either illegal votes or uncounted legal votes. It is two months past time to show all the counted illegal votes or to show all the votes that would have been legal if they had been counted.

Either we are a society of laws and not of men or we are not. On the “society of laws” side, dozens of courts and all 50 states have ruled that the presidential election was fair. Courts are arbitrators of truth as is each state’s secretary of state, as is each local election office. When those decisions and structures of society are repeatedly called fraudulent by the leader of the nation, chaos reigns, as it did Jan. 6 at the Capitol.

On the “society of men” side, thousands rose in insurrection based on the lies of now former President Donald Trump.

Rhetoric is just that, words. Words do have consequences, as is being said. On Jan. 6 at the Capitol Building the consequences of four years of spinning fantasies came home to roost.

Believe false words, but when there are not facts – the truth – to support them and people rally around rhetoric, they are in denial, delusional, or doubting and not trusting our system of government. That day in Washington, D.C. they were insurrectionists, revolting against the United States.

Let that sink in this week, when in La Conner American flags flew on Morris and First streets as the nation celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Monday.

For many Skagitonians, a population that is older – 40% over 60 years old – and largely white – 80% according to the EDASC website – racism and Black Lives Mattering can be foreign and bring little sympathy. But Black lives and racism are neither distant in miles nor years.

All the times King went to jail, he was accountable to his cause, his nation and the truth. He put himself in the spotlight in search of justice. Justice demands accountability. Democracy requires accountability. Deaths need accountability.

It is 155 years after the Civil War. We are late in having accountability. The southern states started leaving the Union in December 1860. They broke their bonds with the United States. They lost that war but emerged victorious even to this day.

Today, some are again choosing a more narrow view that they find real for them and their compatriots. They call these “facts,” their beliefs passed on by people they believe in. But such information is narrow and parochial. It repeatedly fails the test of the rule of law, of universality.

Time is the great arbitrator. History does not lie. For us to be set free by our history, we have to both know and embrace its truths.