There was once a young political consultant who tended sheep in a house of white within a dark forest. It was rather boring for him all day, so he sought an incident through which he could get a little attention and therefore, a more lofty position among the staff in the house of white.

He learned of a Muslim boy who was detained for bringing a suspicious device into his school. He rushed down toward the house of white’s briefing room calling out “it is only a boy who made a clock, it is only a boy who made a clock”. The senior staffers came out to meet him, and some of them stopped with him for a considerable time until the head wolf heard of it and blessed the media opportunity. This pleased all who lived in the house of white, so the staffers briefed the mainstream media who obediently molded the boy into a political statement. The head wolf even invited the boy into the house of white for a private opportunity to make a huge media splash against stereotyping and Islamophobia. 

All the villagers who thought the boy had built a bomb were chastised, threatened and shipped off to sensitivity training. The villagers were told it is hateful to voice concern when Muslim boys make things that look like bombs. But shortly after this another boy did make a bomb, disguised as a clock. This time the villagers, who had been fooled before and were rehabilitated into silence, quietly hoped the boy was just a future engineer. Nobody dared to stir or ask if it was actually a timer on a detonator. But this time, when the boy’s clock struck 8, America wept.

When the villagers turned to the head wolf, he said:

“A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth.”

The liar had told the truth, but nobody knew how to ask why.