Truth and Politics
Rethinking 1st Amendment Rights
The American electorate has spoken. By electing Donald Trump, it has rejected the dishonest representations of the current Administration and its propagandist corporate media concerning the false claims of its success and its mischaracterization of Trump as a “fascist threat to Democracy.” The takeaway lesson of this election was summarized in the 1970s by the political philosopher Hannah Arendt in her essay Lying in Politics: “There always comes the point beyond which lying becomes counterproductive. The point is reached when the audience to which the lies are addressed is forced to disregard altogether the distinguishing line between truth and falsehood in order to survive.”
Arendt lived through the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany and studied the former’s effects on the Soviet Union. Undoubtedly, she would have recognized how lying has become a staple of today’s Leftist Democratic Party.
Arendt recognized that “truth and politics” are often at odds, as politics is concerned with the polity and its activities, whereas truth is unaffected by them. While it may at times be necessary to lie to the people, in order to preserve state secrets required to protect it from enemies, in modern times lying has become a self-serving strategy of governing elites that tends to benefit them financially, protects them from public outrage, and maintains them in power.
In the information age, it is easier to lie to the public on a large scale with the assistance of supportive media outlets than at any other time in history. Politically driven lies have in recent years included amongst others, obfuscating responsibility for the Kennedy assassination, and misleading the American public concerning the conduct of the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. But the willingness to lie arguably reached its apogee during the Biden-Harris Administration, which has routinely relied on mendacity to describe the state of the economy, the conduct of wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the security of the southern border, imaginal issues of gender, and to characterize Trump and his supporters as enemies of democracy. In the recent election, Americans were forced to choose between the false narratives of the Biden-Harris Administration concerning its accomplishments, and the actual dismal truths of what it has wrought.
According to Arendt, “truth” can be characterized as either “factual” or “rational.” The latter includes truths arrived at by pure reason, e.g., that 2+2=4 or that a triangle has three angles that sum to 180 degrees. Scientific facts established by unbiased empirical observation also belong in this category, as do religious truths. Although the latter are not necessarily arrived at by inerrant reason they share with “rational truth” the property of not being subject to human alteration.
Rational truth is the realm of the philosopher; it is discerned in the private domain where it remains inured to the opinions of others. As politics is properly an activity within the public domain, rational truth exists outside of it, and as such may be viewed as resistant to political lies. George Orwell described this in 1984, in which he argues that 2+2 no longer necessarily equal 4 in a totalitarian society, rather they sum to whatever the state says that they do. This is also why religious “truths” represent a challenge to the totalitarian state, as they introduce the possibility of an alternative “higher” verity.
On the other hand, “factual truths” represent events that have already occurred, and while subject to interpretation they cannot be altered by opinions. But they do suffer from an inherent weakness, in that they require confirmation by witnesses, and the latter may be prone to misperceptions, and can choose to lie purposefully. Nevertheless, once a fact has been established, it is virtually impossible to eradicate it through deception, as that requires the systematic efforts of a totalitarian state. It is no easy task to erase facts completely.
Nevertheless, it is the ability to distort or suppress factual truths, and this is why politicians and a dishonest media focus on altering them. It is easy to lie about “Bidenomics” or Trump’s behaviors in the past, because these facts can be falsified, denied, or presented out of context. In the recent election Harris and her supporters in the press continued to present the statements made by Trump at Charlottesville as evidence that he supported white supremacists by taking his word out of context. But the true facts will eventually out, and when they do, there are only so many “brush fires” that politicians and a corrupt media can put out.
The “truth” is the potential enemy of politicians, as it can limit their ability to persuade the public, restricting their ability to effect the changes they desire, and hindering their efforts at remaining in power. When the public is faced with the cognitive dissonance of having to accept the lies of politicians and the media over their lived experience, it produces a destabilizing effect, and they will invariably choose to believe what they see as being in their best interests. You cannot tell an American citizen living on a border that is being overrun by migrants, that it is “secure,” or insist that the price of butter and gas is “down” when it is actually “up.” Only when imposed by force can false political narratives be expected to succeed, but even then a point will be reached when the public will reject the lies its government is attempting to perpetrate.
As lying is a part of politics, there must be limits on how it is allowed to permeate a democratic form of government. Certain societal institutions must be allowed to function outside the reach of politics and public opinion. These include the judicial system that ideally should remain disinterested in outcomes, unlike what has transpired in the numerous recent political prosecutions by the Biden Administration directed against Trump and conservatives.
Science, too, must remain aloof from politics and opinion. Yet the stances taken by the medical community on Covid-19 vaccines and transgenderism, as well as those taken by climate scientists, have not been based on unbiased observation. Consequently, there is no compelling reason to trust their facts, when the observers have been biased by politics or influenced by financial gain.
Ideally, academics is a place where discourse can be safely conducted outside the realm of politics. Its proper role is to provide places where issues can be weighed in a disinterested manner so that students can gain informed perspectives concerning various disciplines, including politics.
But arguably the most critical organ in society that needs to remain aloof from politics is a free press, as it serves the crucial role of reporting facts to the public without suppressing or editing them. While journalists are entitled to their personal political opinions and biases, they must strive to curb them and remain reporters of facts, as the public relies upon them to supply accurate facts, upon which it can make intelligent informed choices. If journalists fail to do this, the public will remain poorly informed and disoriented, unable to discern what is transpiring in their world and how how best to react to it.
Currently, all of these institutions are failing miserably at fulfilling their expected roles. This has resulted from infiltration by neo-Marxist ideology that insists that all activities must be “political,” and that their is no role for “extra-political institutions. Professionals in many fields have lost track of their proper roles, by choosing to act instead as political activists, thereby undermining their credibility.
Divorced from every day realities, the elitist forces in the Democratic party and corporate society attempted to foist a singularly unqualified candidate on the public. Kamala Harris was ill prepared to serve as President of the United States, yet the Democratic Party and globalist elites discounted the ability of America’s citizens to notice, hoping that they would choose her based of race and gender, while concomitantly ignoring the abysmal record of the current Democratic Administration. They proved themselves unable to recognize the widespread unpopularity of their policies, and unwilling or constitutively incapable of accepting it. They displayed classical hubris, i.e. the “pride that cometh before the fall.” One can only hope that the incoming Administration will be successful in turning the page permanently on this disgraceful episode in American history.