In response to the recent letter “Tell Beem There’s Plenty of Blame to Share,” which seems to assert that current political stalemate over a border wall is equally the fault of both political parties, it should be noted that President Trump’s message to Democratic leaders was “I will be the one to shut (the government) down. I’m not going to blame you for it.”

There has been a term coined and discussed in several books and elsewhere: “post-truth.” In a nutshell, post-truth refers to the times we live in, where truth no longer matters and there are instead “alternative facts,” where the only thing that matters is that they support your view. A remedy, if we are to become unmired, is to be rid of the notion that in order to be “fair and balanced” all sides of an issue need to be given equal credence. If the need for a border wall is not supported by those who are in a position to know (the facts), then it is not true that both sides are to blame, and to do so may be seen as both nutty and dangerous.

Jeff Christiansen
Gorham