"You Can't Handle the Truth."

It's remarkable about that line from "A Few Good Men," because Jack Nicholson was so into his character that he spoke this line even though it was not part of the script.  But it was such a perfect line for the character and the situation that it was preserved in the movie.

Nicholson's character hasn't been the only person to reveal truths many people don't want to hear.  And the rest of them have not been fictions.  But the message is always the same: "you can't handle the truth."

GHWB, who referred to Reagan's "trickle down" money theory as "voodoo economics," which it was, stopped complaining about it once Reagan tapped him as VP.  And after Reagan's second term, GHWB ran for president, and got elected.  He vowed "no new taxes."  But by the end of his term, he could see how right he was when he ran against Reagan in the primaries 12 years before, and he got himself unelected when he revealed that tax increases would be necessary to preserve the economy.  The voters couldn't handle that truth.

In 2016, Colin Kaepernick, championship-winning quarterback for the Oakland Raiders, kneeled while most others on his team stood during the national anthem.  Setting aside that a national anthem has nothing to do with a football game, Kaepernick knelt in protest.  He was protesting the large swath of racism in this country, police brutality against African-Americans in particular, or both.  Kaepernick was soon benched, dropped from the team, and despite spending all of every year keeping himself in excellent condition, and wanting a spot on a team, has been black-balled from American football.  Many teams have needed, and hired, quarterbacks since then, and almost all of them have been unsuccessful.  But no one will touch Kaepernick.  Because Americans, and football fans, can't handle the truth about Kaepernick's protest.  And setting aside what we generally like to claim is our commitment to the US Constitution and law and order, the plain fact of the matter is that Kaepernick was, and still is, right.

Chris Christie Rips Into Hostile Crowd at GOP Summit (msn.com)  Erstwhile Trump enabler and sycophant, and now Trump critic, Chris Christie found the crowd at the GOP Summit to be hostile.  There was no mention of what Christie said, unless the complaint about him was just that he was no longer a Trump enabler and sycophant, but when the crowd booed him and tried to silence him, he said "The problem is you fear the truth.  You want to shout down any voice that says anything different than what you want to hear."  And there it is again.  Even if someone argued that whatever Christie said wasn't the truth, the fact is that Americans can't handle hearing anything that doesn't comport with their presumptions.  (And frankly, if I had to choose what was more likely true -- something said by Donnie Trump, or some different thing said by more or less anyone else -- it wouldn't be a very hard choice to make.  Yeah, absolutely, I'll bet money that whatever Donnie says is wrong.)

It's a longer list, and we've been through various other parts of it: whether or not someone is "pro-life," whether or not the "Second Amendment" has anything to do with guns, whether or not the founders, and the "Founding Fathers," of this country intended it to be religious/Christian, etc.  But the fundamental fact is that Americans "can't handle the truth."  What makes these truths Americans can't handle more tragic is that they're either very clearly and explicitly stated, or they're obvious.  But Americans can't handle them anyway.