Many years ago, the journalist Michael Kinsley noted an odd truth about American political life: “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth — some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” While there are any number of other gaffes that a politician can make (please refer to anything ever uttered by Joe Biden), this particular type of screw-up has become known as a “Kinsley gaffe.” It can be very embarrassing for a politician to accidentally tell the truth. He’ll usually catch himself and start lying again immediately, and his partisans will pretend to believe the falsehoods over the truth, but everybody still knows he screwed up. He can lie about being momentarily and unintentionally honest, but he can’t unsay it.

Or she! It’s 2019, and it’s time we all recognized that women can be every bit as deceptive and untruthful as men. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) certainly is.

At today’s DACA prayer breakfast, Sen. @maziehirono says we need activists “committed to human rights and environmental rights, climate change — believe in climate change as though it’s a religion (it’s not it’s science).” pic.twitter.com/0j7IU6apcP — Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 12, 2019

“For a lot of us, protesting, marching, that’s not something that we normally do. But you know what, these are times that call for us to do those things that we believe in and to march. And not just to march, ’cause that’s important to show solidarity, but then to do those things such as voter registration, get people out to vote. So that we can have people here who truly are committed to human rights, environmental rights, climate change — Believe in climate change as though it’s a religion, it’s not, it’s science — and all the things that remains (sic) to be done. And that is a lot. This is a very divided country, and these are not normal times.”

If climate change is science, where does belief enter into it? If it’s science, why treat it like a religion?

Maybe this wouldn’t be such a divided country if skeptics weren’t treated like heretics. Maybe these times would be more normal if Democrats thought before they spoke. Of course, they thrive on division. They can’t exist without it. Their modus operandi is to set people against each other and then profit from the conflict. And of course, the whole time they have to blame their opponents. That’s how they’ve always done it, and they’ll keep doing so as long as it keeps working.

But thanks for this Kinsley gaffe, Senator Hirono. We already knew climate change is a cult, but it’s nice to hear you admit it. You told us the truth, if only for a second, and we’ll remember it. Because you’d rather we didn’t.