Perhaps I am a bit nostalgic about the “good ’ole days” when people said what they meant and meant what they said. There was no other ambition but to say and do the right thing.

If somebody were a scoundrel, for example, one didn’t place a halo on his/her head just to get a job. The higher up they were and because they could do a lot of damage from a lofty position, the more old-timers seemed motivated to speak the truth to avert a future catastrophe, even at a personal price.

Now, of course, such a principle seems old-fashioned. Wanna-be leaders will say anything, no matter how contrary to what they thought originally, to get a position of power. The only good thing about their power lust is that they have given a good name to street prostitutes.

The newest example of a wackadoodle conversion is the endorsement of Donald Trump by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Mr. Kennedy, an anti-vaccine conspirator, and a claimant in the past that additives in food are causing “gender confusion,” previously  lambasted former President Donald Trump as the “worst president ever and barely human,” while Mr. Trump derided Mr. Kennedy as a “liberal lunatic.” Now they are living happily after as a political couple in exchange apparently for a cabinet job if Mr. Trump wins.

Equally axiomatic that power trumps  principle is the conversion of JD Vance, who once called his running mate “America’s Hitler,” a “moral disaster,” “a total fraud,” and “a reprehensible human being.” His rhetoric escalated against Mr. Trump while he was promoting his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” Now he obsequiously apologizes for “being wrong about the guy” while explaining why today he is one of his biggest supporters.

Of course, seeking the vice-presidential slot had nothing to do with his “conversion.” Nikki Haley went from arguing during her presidential nomination bid that Mr. Trump was “diminished” and that he had changed to the worst since her job with him, to “Donald Trump has my strong endorsement. Period.”

So, I have to ask myself, whether you believed them then or believe them now, how do these sycophants have the unmitigated gall to pontificate their new conversion? Most normal people would be too ashamed to try with a straight face.

Alas, I think these wackadoodles think they can get away with revisionism because we, the people, no longer are critical thinkers. We allow these charlatans to make up their own truths as though they are entitled to their opinions. They are not.

Ideas should be subject to rigorous challenges and the sifting of fact from fiction. Not everybody is entitled to his own opinion if that opinion is rooted in falsehoods or cherry-picked information that is scientifically incorrect.

In the past, folks were glad when the Church knocked it off against Copernicus and Galileo because, well, the Earth turned out not to be the center of the universe. Were that being debated now, a “to each his own” attitude would baptize any interpretation as though differing points of view are all created equal.

Until society gets back to a more rigorous requirement to establish the truth, folks who speak out of both sides of their mouth will prosper, as the three phonies did above.

Arlene Violet is an attorney and former Rhode Island Attorney General.