Joseph Sabino Mistick: Truth matters, and it's worth fighting for

Not long after the end of his second term in the White House, Ulysses S. Grant left for a world tour, during which he was celebrated by kings and political leaders and common folk. In Germany, after being introduced as the man who saved the Union, Grant set the record straight.

“What saved the Union was the coming forward of the young men of the nation,” Grant said. “They came from their homes and fields, as they did in the time of the Revolution, giving everything to the country. To their devotion we owe the salvation of the Union.”

We saw that devotion again last week as four police officers testified before the House select committee that is investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection — the worst attack on our Capitol since the War of 1812. The officers and their colleagues fought for their lives as they defended the Capitol, members of Congress and the Republic from domestic terrorists.

Many of the terrorists were outfitted in military gear, wielding weapons and acting in concert.

Police officers were beaten with their own shields, and they fought off those who tried to grab their weapons.

Officers were sprayed with caustic chemicals. Some were knocked unconscious. One testifying officer had a heart attack and suffered a brain injury as the mob swarmed him. Black officers were assaulted and subjected to the worst racial abuse.

In a despicable act of desecration and depravity, the traitors beat police officers with flagpoles carrying the American flag. Some officers were even beaten with flagpoles carrying the “Blue Lives Matter” flags that are meant to show respect for the police.

Despite all of this, which one officer described as “hand to hand, inch by inch” fighting, the officers were and are resolute. They all spoke of their oaths to uphold the Constitution. They spoke of duty and American values. They did what Grant described when duty called.

And, as compelling as their words were, no one has to take them at their word. Every bit of what they described was captured on tape and aired for the world to see.

There are still those who will continue to deny the undeniable and refute the irrefutable because it doesn’t fit their fictional version of events. They believe Donald Trump’s big lie that the election was stolen from him, the same lie that inspired the terrorists to attack our police officers and the Capitol.

In her 1967 essay “Truth and Politics,” political thinker Hannah Arendt recognized the power of political lies and propaganda to wear away at our sense of reality. There is only one version of the truth and it must stand alone, while there are many versions of political lies, a constant and shifting attack on the truth.

Arendt wrote, “that the surest long-term result of brainwashing is a peculiar kind of cynicism — an absolute refusal to believe in the truth of anything, no matter how well this truth may be established.”

But the truth still matters to most of us, and it is worth fighting for. That’s why these hearings are important. Those who planned and executed this insurrection must be brought to account, and their names must be inscribed in infamy in the book of American history.