“The first casualty, when war comes, is truth.”
The prophecy came from Hiram Johnson, a Republican, in 1917. With America at a boiling point with military-grade weapons and tactics arriving on U.S. doorsteps, the nation’s political fabric is fraying at a level not seen in generations. And as The New York Times writes, the killings of two American citizens by federal agents is “the latest smudging of an already thin line between politics and violence in America.”
In her most recent article for The Conversation, Boise State scholar and Frank and Bethine Church Endowed Chair of Public Affairs, Dr. Sam Martin, poses: “A government can choose to investigate the killing of a protester – or choose to blame the victim and pin it all on ‘domestic terrorism.’”
Martin joined Morning Edition host George Prentice to talk about why she says, “Minneapolis is not just a tragedy, it is a test,” and the “old lady who swallowed a fly” theory.
Read the full transcript of the conversation below.
GEORGE PRENTICE: It's Morning Edition. Good morning. I'm George Prentice. I've been thinking about looking for a reason versus looking for reason. Indeed, a reason can be used to explain something or explain something away. True or false. While instead we may search for reason as a search for understanding, drawing conclusions based on evidence. Which is why we look forward to today's conversation and spend some time with a familiar voice. Doctor Sam Martin is here. The Frank and Bethine Church Endowed Chair of Public Affairs. We are anxious to tell you that her most recent article is a must read in The Conversation, the independent news organization that dedicates itself to unlocking the knowledge of experts for the public good and Doctor Martin's most recent article poses this a government can choose to investigate the killing of a protester, or choose to blame the victim and pin it all on domestic terrorism. Take all that in while I say good morning to Doctor Sam Martin. Good morning.
DR. SAM MARTIN: Hi, George. Good morning. It's so great to talk to you again.
PRENTICE: What is swallow a fly logic.
MARTIN: So swallow a fly. Logic is something that I came up with a long time ago, 15 years ago, when I often teach, um, First Amendment thinking and First Amendment jurisprudence. And one of the first things that we introduce with the First Amendment is the idea. You know, we all many of us associate the First Amendment with the idea of critique. And very often elected officials don't like to be criticized. And that goes all the way back to, you know, when when we had kings and queens and that kind of thing. If you if a person criticized the king, uh, the king would worry that he was going to be, uh, lose the respect of the people. And if he lost the respect of the people, then the kingdom would fall. And so that's you were not allowed. It was it was a it was a criminal penalty. People would sometimes be killed for speaking out against the king. And while we don't do that in the United States, sometimes we see a very similar logic that I tell my students is like, swallow a fly logic, where I'm referring, of course, to the popular children's song where a woman eats a fly and then she keeps devouring bigger and bigger animals to try to take care of this fly that she swallowed until she tries to devour a horse, and that that's too much and she ultimately dies.
MARTIN: And what I say is that, you know, people in power, people in government, very often do this too, because they say something like, you know, if someone says something or puts out a message that that we don't like, gosh, people might believe it, they might be persuaded. And if people become persuaded, then they might stop supporting the president, the war, the project, even the government itself. And if nobody supports the government or the president, then their willingness to participate and to go along, that weakens. And if that weakens and the state falls, then there's no there's no First Amendment. So who even cares? And so it's this kind of nihilistic train of thought that begins with, you have to respect. If you don't respect the president, you don't respect the governor, but you know, you're going to you're are partly responsible for the fact that democracy is going to fail. And it's a slippery slope that sort of follows that same logic of the old lady and the fly.
PRENTICE: I keep thinking that 2026 through a political lens is a year of this and that. In other words, it's tariffs and Greenland or it's Canada and the lack of access to food stamps. Is it ICE? Is it the latest shooting? And is it just quite simply jobs? How much of a shadow might the most recent event in Minneapolis cast over the midterms? I know we're half a year away, but elections are won and lost somewhere in the middle.
MARTIN: Yeah. I mean, let me say first that I think that what's happening in Minneapolis with, um, these tragic killings and the the sort of collision between Border Patrol and the citizens of Minneapolis. What we're seeing, I don't think, is a fight over a single incident. It's a fight over reality. When officials issue confident claims that quickly collide with what witnesses say they saw are with video, those witnesses take or corrections that come down later. We're not just talking about damage to the record. We're talking about damage to the damage to the public's ability to trust that there's a sort of shared world that we're arguing about and that, I think, takes us right to the question that you're asking about what is what could all of this mean for the election? That's that's going to happen here in 9 or 10 months. And I think the most realistic danger to the election coming up in November. It the most it's I'm not worried so much about a dramatic cancellation or like the election not happening so much as I worry about disruption and intimidation and administrative sabotage and really the deliberate de-legitimization that that so often happens these days when one side does not come out on top in the election, this, this thing that like, if I didn't win, uh, that must mean that somebody played with the results rather than just really believing that the people have the right to vote for whomever they want. I don't think anyone's be able to stop the election, but they sure can try to make people doubt it.
PRENTICE: Yeah, we dehumanize in one moment, but that's a close cousin to disenfranchise.
MARTIN: I think the point of floating ideas like we ... you shouldn't be prepared not to trust the vote in the upcoming election, or we may not even have it. We're going to cancel the election. The point is not about the legality of the election. I would encourage people to think what's happening when that goes on is permission, right? When a person says that, when a leader says that and it enters our public conversation, then something unthinkable like canceling an election, something unthinkable becomes normalized. And once that happens, all bets are off.
PRENTICE: You say Minneapolis is not just a tragedy, it is a test.
MARTIN: Well, I think the Minneapolis shootings, they are not only an argument about the use of force or how much people are allowed to sort of confront or badger even public law enforcement and public officials. I think that they're a test about whether or not I think of truth as a public good, right? We are all entitled to the truth of our government, just like we. So parks are a public good and libraries are a public good and roads are public good. Well, so is truth. And this is a question right now about whether we still believe, as a people in the United States, that something is owed to us, even if it's hard information and even if tensions are very high, because our democratic life depends on connection and agreement between citizens, between individuals, and between those individuals and the government, and that cooperation, that That contract, that willingness to work together. It can't be sustained when there's not a sort of shared understanding of what has happened and a willingness to take accountability.
PRENTICE: Can I ask what course or courses are you teaching currently?
MARTIN: Um, you know, I have the good I have the good fortune to teach. This semester. I'm teaching a course in political communication, which is really about how our leaders speak to us, how campaigns happen, um, and, and what good and ethical political communication looks like. And so we had quite a discussion yesterday in class about Minneapolis sort of fell off the syllabus a little bit, just, you know, trying to figure out really what it means to govern. Right. And we had a really great conversation yesterday about how we very often think of government these days as citizens, as I'm going to defend my side, or what are the political stakes or what are the whatever stakes. But in moments like this, it's really good to remember that we're in a shared project to solve problems and make life possible and better for everyone. That requires a willingness to speak about hard questions. To say things are wrong when they're wrong, even if your side is the one who did it. What I tell my students is a good citizen is cynical. They're going to ask hard questions. But a good citizen isn't a nihilist who just believes that there's no solution possible. So I'm going to get as much as I want. It's been a really great semester. I've been glad to teach that class.
PRENTICE: I bet I want to loop back and encourage our listeners to dive into your most recent article. It is in the conversation and we will link to that on our website. Doctor Sam Martin is the Frank and Bethine Church Endowed Chair of Public Affairs and a regular visitor to this broadcast. And for that I am eternally grateful. And and for this morning, I'm grateful for your time.
MARTIN: Hey, George. Me too. And just everyone out there. Be careful not to swallow any flies.
Find reporter George Prentice @georgepren
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