Late May 2020, and I’m talking to Phil, my beloved father-in-law.

I’ve returned home from yet another protest that “Black Lives Matter” — and they still do. (You’ll notice the poster visible behind me when I’m on Zoom.)

I’m stretched out in the living room’s one large, single-person lounge chair, legs comfortably resting on the ottoman.

My iPhone is on my chest. Speakerphone engaged.

I press each set of fingers into either side of my forehead, thumbs at the back of my head. I am baffled.

He’s telling me Portland isn’t safe. We should move. He’ll help us.

“But, Phil, it’s not citywide. It’s two blocks near a park. That’s the extent of the George Floyd action. It’s not really very much. What you think is happening isn’t really happening. It’s happening, but it’s not what it looks like. Portland is fine.”

I can think of nothing else to add. Neither does he. So we sit in silence for a moment.

“Please, buddy,” he pleads. “Consider what I’m asking you.”

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Phil believes what the news tells him more than he is able to trust the eye-witness account from the man who he trusts with his daughter and grandchildren.

Isn’t that wild? A media report can outweigh the voice of a beloved son-in-law. Woah.

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Rabbi-joke: Maybe this is why the bible implores us to avoid mediums?! (Sorry.)

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I remember learning about yellow journalism of the late 1800s. I remember William Randolph Hearst’s infamous dictum to his illustrators—in the age before cameras: “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.” Which happened. As a kid I was (and to this day I am) astounded by Hearst’s willingness to lie — all the more so knowing that people trusted him. I don’t know how Hearst could sleep at night.

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I lay awake at night, thinking about where we can move.

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Trump has repeatedly called Portland a war-zone. Though, it’s not. The ICE building — one building, on one corner, in one part of the city — is boarded up. That’s it. However, as that’s all people see, that’s all they know. Trump is doing a Hearst. He’s manufacturing a war. The more people see images of federal agents standing, armed, atop the ICE building, the more they see Portland is a war-zone. It’s not. How can I convince people otherwise if I couldn’t convince my father-in-law a few years ago? Trump is a bully. And, he’s threatening to “beat us up” after school. I’m having flashbacks to being a kid—trying not to cry as the camp school-bus bully twists the skin on my forearms back and forth until both arms are red and burning.

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Portland isn’t a war zone. Thou shalt not bear false witness. I wonder how Trump sleeps at night.