OPINION: Truth and decency are on the ballot this Election Day

Serial liar Donald Trump has concluded that truth and decency no longer matter to American voters. His evil calculation is that the marketing of fear will override the traditional values we hold dear as Americans.

Perversely, Trump seeks to empower Americans by trafficking in lies intended to go wildly viral and distort true political discourse.

Thanks to Trump, we have been diminished as a nation as he spews new levels of disinformation in America.

Disinformation is the willful disregard for the truth that intends to deceive. Misinformation may tilt toward exaggerations but falls short of the malicious intent to lie.

Trump’s disinformation campaign is corrosive, deceitful, relentless and un-American.

We now see how a decade of nonstop lying by Trump has negatively affected the course of our lives. Trump has cornered the marketplace of untruths. It is clearly unpresidential. His phalanx of enablers don’t hesitate to violate their own personal codes of decency to support his mendacity.

When Trump essentially says that boiling is freezing, his toadies describe this Orwellian rhetoric as colorful. With a straight face and lengthy oratorical flourishes, Trump substitutes Americans’ search for truth with immoral behavior.

He lied to America about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio; Aurora, Colo., and the Federal Emergency Management Agency in North Carolina. He claims ignorance of the Project 2025 right-wing takeover of our government. In fact, 144 of the 267 contributors to Project 2025 worked in the Trump administration, on his campaign or on his transition team. Trump distorted the truth more than 30,000 times while president, and his pace of untruths has only accelerated.

Too many Americans have outsourced the traditional search for truth to a convicted felon and the architect of an insurrection. As a result, they have come up morally empty.

If Trump were a lawyer, he would most certainly be disbarred or subject to ethical sanctions and financial consequences — just like Rudy Giuliani.

What does it say about the body politic (about us?) that Trump’s fearmongering and dishonesty have not sunk him in the polls?

Our children should not be exposed to Trump’s cult of lies. Think of the moral rot this sends to the next generation. He is not a role model for virtue. How would you react if your children’s school principal, coach or scoutmaster acted this way?

Clearly, Trump believes honesty is for sissies. To him, real men don’t let the truth stand in the way of selfish goals — namely, to avoid prison and regain the largest pulpit in the world for revenge and retribution.

As Trump becomes increasingly more profane with each rally, you can palpably feel our American culture turning tawdry and vulgar.

Trump’s unstable behavior is not uplifting or inspiring. It heightens our polarization. Our international allies are certainly watching and drawing up contingency plans as America shrinks in stature. In capitals around the world, trepidation accompanies sneers. No Trump bluster will offset this national embarrassment.

Trump refused a second debate with Vice President Kamala Harris because he feared further embarrassment. His default position is a misogynistic attack on Harris’ intellect. To outdo himself, he flings a vulgar characterization of Harris as a “s--- vice-president.” Seriously, we’ve endured the “f--- Biden” signs and we’re ending the campaign on a lewd level, germinated, fertilized, nurtured and harvested by Donald Trump.

Trump’s recent 12-minute riff on the size of Arnold Palmer’s manhood was a low point in American politics. His focus on genitalia and sexual assault has been well known to us all since hearing his own words in the “Hollywood Access” tapes.

Roy Cohn, Trump’s disgraced mob lawyer, taught his client to “attack, attack, attack” and “never back down.” As Cohn’s apprentice, Trump learned well. However, a combative and faux-militaristic persona does not cleanse a lie. The truth is the truth.

We’re at a moral crossroad in this election.

Character matters. Truth matters. Integrity matters.

Let’s not dumb down democracy by paying homage to a serial liar.

LaRocco, of Boise, represented Idaho’s 1st Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1991-95.