After a career built on lies, Rex Tillerson slams leaders like Trump who lie

[riversedge]

After a career built on lies, Rex Tillerson slams leaders like Trump who lie


https://thinkprogress.org/after-a-career-built-on-lies-rex-tillerson-slams-leaders-like-trump-who-lie-e697c85f3e22/
Former CEO of Exxon, the leader in climate disinformation, rebukes those who push "alternative realities."

Joe Romm
May 17, 2018, 12:07 pm


In one of the most hypocritical graduation speeches in recent memory, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson launched a thinly veiled but scathing critique of President Donald Trump.
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Media coverage focused on the “veiled rebuke of President Trump,” who is “prone” to lying and exaggeration, as the New York Times put it.

But we must remember that the lies of ExxonMobil are unique in the annals of climate and corporate history (see here and below). And they have been as destructive to the future of America as any of Trump’s lies.

Let’s start with the speech, in which Tillerson argues, “An essential tenet of a free society, a free people, is access to the truth.” He repeatedly invoking the biblical saying, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

This leads to his core message:

If our leaders seek to conceal the truth or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom. This is the life of nondemocratic societies, comprised of people who are not free to seek the truth.

Tillerson asserts, “It is only by fierce defense of the truth and a common set of facts that we create the conditions for a democratic, free society, comprised of richly diverse peoples, that those free peoples can explore and find solutions to the very challenges confronting the complex society of free people.”
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Those words are indisputably true. It’s also indisputable that this was a thinly veiled rebuke of President Trump. After all, it was Trump’s Counselor, Kellyanne Conway, who infamously uttered the phrase, “alternative facts,” in January 2017.

But it is also indisputable that ExxonMobil has been a leader of the anti-science disinformation campaign aimed at destroying a common set of facts on climate change. Exxon, to use Tillerson’s words, was thereby undermining “the conditions for a democratic, free society” to “explore and find solutions” to one of America’s greatest challenges.
CREDIT: LM OTERO, AP
Oil Company Exxon Knew About The Scientific Reality Of Climate Change In 1981

[BigmanPigman]

1. After I heard him say this while watching the news

I went on a 5 minute rant about what a hypocrite he is. I am glad someone else thinks so too.

[malaise]

2. Get thee to the greatest page

for truth