Welcome friends!
Did you notice the stories in the papers a while back now about President Trump bragging he had made up some fake facts during a meeting with the leader of our close ally and neighbor to the north Canada? Such peculiar talk to hear from a president of the USA but I suppose we have American conservatives to thank for that. In general they appear to have bought into this whole “alternative fact,” “don’t take words literally,” just say anything if it helps you get what you want path Mr. Trump and his cronies unveiled in the buildup to the last presidential campaign and have continued to develop now they’re in power. I have to say as a liberal it all sounds very odd and rather foreign to me. So contemptuous of human reason and the truth. So dismissive of the need to communicate with one another honestly and clearly. So antithetical to the motivating spirit of political democracy. Just doesn’t sound very American to me at least not the plain talking pragmatic sort of American I admire. My apologies to my foreign friends but sounds rather like something one might hear in an old European newsreel from the 1930s or 1940s. But I guess that’s a matter of opinion. Clearly we have a major disagreement in this country right now about what being an American entails or ought to entail anyway. I mentioned before I seemed to see certain similarities or unifying themes behind the different groups of conservatives in particular economic and social / religious conservatives and it occurs to me this rather obvious preference for rhetorically convenient storytelling over fact and substance may not simply be an insignificant commonality as I previously supposed but one of the fundamental themes that ties these various groups of conservatives together.
What got me thinking along these lines is that one problem I have with religion broadly speaking is it typically proposes and promotes what might be termed fake facts. Statements that purport to provide information about the world but are scientifically incorrect or otherwise lacking the sort of evidence one would normally require to accept such statements as facts. A random example from contemporary Christianity here in the USA would be the age of the earth. Apparently some religious folks either found in the bible or estimated using information from the bible the earth is a few thousand years old. It’s clearly a fake fact. Scientists put the age somewhere around 4.5 billion years old based on what appear to be some pretty solid dating techniques. How do these Christian groups reconcile this many orders of magnitude discrepancy? The approach they appear to have settled upon is both are equally valid. Scientists simply have their way of looking at things and their own facts and their own reality and religious folk have a different way of looking at things with different facts and a different reality.
That was basically the line former governor of the very southern and very conservative state of Texas and former Republican candidate for president of the USA Rick Perry took when telling a kid at a speaking event a few years ago that Texas public schools teach both the theory of evolution and “creationism” and concluding with the rather remarkable line “I figure you’re smart enough to figure out which one is right.” Yes, apparently Texas doesn’t actually teach its kids per se. They present a mix of fact and fantasy and tell the kids to go figure out which one is right on their own. The kid also specifically asked Mr. Perry his understanding of the age of the earth to which Mr. Perry replied, “You know what, I don’t have any idea — I know it’s pretty old … I’m not sure anybody actually knows completely and absolutely how old the earth is.” Completely and absolutely? How about a ballpark estimate? Are we talking a few thousand years or multiple billions of years? Why would anyone profess ignorance about something like that? Because to answer it in a way that would make sense to religious conservatives here in the USA one would have to specify which reality one has in mind: scientific reality or religious reality. Like many conservatives he apparently concluded things he would gladly tell his base in a private meeting were just a bit too comical or ridiculous to say in a more general public forum.
Why do religious people say funny things that are clearly not true or in the vernacular make stuff up? (Actually I suppose in the vernacular it’s more commonly make shit up but let’s use the more genteel version shall we?) Most likely they say it for the same reason any other person might tell tall tales. They say it because it serves their purposes. It makes them feel good. It comports with what they find convenient or attractive to believe.
And that attitude is really the driving force behind much of conservative and Republican Party rhetoric to this day. It just doesn’t really matter what the truth is. Facts don’t matter. Reality doesn’t matter. Lying doesn’t matter. One is completely justified saying and doing whatever one likes if it makes one feel good or suits one’s purposes. This theory was expressed quite clearly by President Trump’s Senior Advisor Kellyanne Conway when she explained to NBC’s Chuck Todd why the White House had instructed former White House press secretary Sean Spicer to claim Mr. Trump’s inauguration audience was the biggest ever when it was quite clearly nothing of the sort. Ms. Conway explained, “You’re saying it’s a falsehood. And they’re giving — Sean Spicer, our press secretary — alternative facts.” Mr. Todd replied, “Alternative facts aren’t facts, they are falsehoods.” He continued to press Ms. Conway about why the White House had instructed Mr. Spicer to lie about the crowd size until Ms. Conway finally relented and explained she felt it wasn’t Mr. Todd’s job to call things the Press Secretary said ridiculous and that’s why “we feel compelled to get out and clear the air and put alternative facts out there.” Come again? They’re clearing the air by lying? How does that work? Look, it’s perfectly simple. The White House apparently felt someone had criticized some unspecified prior statement by the Press Secretary so they felt “compelled” to lie or rather to “put alternative facts our there” to counteract that criticism and make the White House look better. The lie was justified because it suited their needs of the moment. It made them happy. It comported with their image of the world not necessarily as it is but as they would like it to be or least how they would like other people to imagine it to be. And isn’t this just the religious perspective on truth and reality I was discussing earlier applied to politics?
A great deal has been written about the origins of the terrible blight on the USA and indeed the world represented by President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Clearly many unwholesome trends were at work to create something this toxic and destructive. The advent and dissemination of disinformation technology, the degeneration of certain news outlets into propaganda agencies for the conservative political machine, foreign meddling and manipulation of domestic simpletons. However, I suspect one of the primary causes of this scourge is the unholy union of social, economic, and political conservatism here in the USA. Raised and nourished on falsehood and egotistical expediency this generation of anti-intellectual know-nothing conservatives is all but immune to the forces of reason, science, evidence, and truth. This is why it’s so important for those of us who oppose this most degenerate and unwholesome of philosophies to stand together in defense of human reason. Let’s not let the best elements of our shared humanity disappear without a fight (and when I say fight I mean with words and ideas and at the ballot box of course not in any other way). Fight for the liberal cause my brothers and sisters!
References
In fundraising speech, Trump says he made up trade claim in meeting with Justin Trudeau. Josh Dawsey, Damian Paletta, and Erica Werner. March 15, 2018. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2018/03/14/in-fundraising-speech-trump-says-he-made-up-facts-in-meeting-with-justin-trudeau/?utm_term=.c0aafd74dbba.
Conway: Trump White House offered ‘alternative facts’ on crowd size. Eric Bradner. January 23, 2017. Eric Bradner. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/22/politics/kellyanne-conway-alternative-facts/index.html.
In exchange with child, Perry calls evolution a “theory” — with “gaps.” Lucy Madison. August 19, 2011. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-exchange-with-child-perry-calls-evolution-a-theory-with-gaps/
