There are two idioms I see exercised frequently in the American political landscape: “If you tell a lie enough times, it becomes the truth” and “Lies travel further than truths.” There is no politician impervious to committing an occasional lie since it’s a feature of the job, not a bug. 

But there are some lies that set the groundwork for political dialogue surrounding a topic solely for the purpose of making their adversaries fight an uphill battle to disprove a false narrative or statement and attempt to slow down a fast-moving and well-traveled lie.

Her school version

This lie gains even more momentum when it’s attached to a group of people with the hopes of causing an emotional reaction and forgoing the criticality of the message being sent. This is exactly the strategy that our vice president, Kamala Harris, executed to further slander Florida Republicans, especially presidential hopeful Gov. Ron DeSantis.

After the Florida Department of Education approved its new curriculum, including specifications surrounding teaching about slavery in public schools, Harris presented her version of events Saturday at a convention for the traditionally black sorority Delta Sigma Theta in Indianapolis: 

“Just yesterday in the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery. They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it.”

But that’s not what the department actually did, and Harris knows this. She’s referring to one line item out of many that give instructions surrounding the teaching of slavery. Here is what it actually says: “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

 Harris went to Jacksonville, Fla., the next day to repeat her claim. 

This purposeful misrepresentation about a singular line even caused a member of Florida’s African American History Standards Workgroup and former chairman of the Commission on Civil Rights, William B. Allen, to publicly denounce Harris’ statement as “categorically false.”

“As I stated in my response to the vice president, it was categorically false. It was never said that slavery was beneficial to Africans,” Allen clarified in an interview with ABC News.

The purpose of this lie is to further encourage a growing animosity from the political left about the right and to distract the right into debating the technicalities of the real statement instead of focusing on the lie itself.

Playing with words

What Harris just did was give us all a lesson in political propaganda — and she ironically used Florida’s educational curriculum to illustrate how effective and simple it is to accomplish, especially for someone in a position of authority.

If we paid attention to Prof. Harris’ whiteboard, we’d see the attention made to the word “benefit” as she alters the wordage “personal benefit” and scribbles “benefited from slavery” to present a false framing while not deviating far from the original terms.

As a professor, she understands that most of her political students won’t research the validity of her alterations because they are too lazy to do so, see her as a trusted authoritative figure or take pleasure in how the revisions confirm their negative biases.

And for dramatic effect, she was conveniently able to conduct a case study of how emotionally effective her formula would be with a live audience of primarily black women.

I’m not a historian, but I’m sure there are many valid debates to be had about what kind of curriculum should be taught to our children from all sides. We should challenge the type of translation of history we want to be conveyed to the next generation and shouldn’t veer away from the ugliness of our country’s past because there are wonderful lessons to be learned from horrible circumstances.

But we can’t have a fair and honest conversation when we have politicians who want to corrupt opportunities for educational growth for political theater to perform bad faith and false interpretations.

The damage has been done, and now Harris can benefit from the frequent-flyer miles her lie has earned.

Adam B. Coleman is the author of “Black Victim to Black Victor” and founder of Wrong Speak Publishing. Follow him on Substack: adambcoleman.substack.com.