Why Truth Doesn't Matter

Today we have New Truth: 'Truthiness', Alternet facts (we learned about this unique newest category from The Mother of All Truth Tellers, Kellyanne Conway, then we have something called the absolute truth, Social Media, texting facts, Breaking News! Fake News, and of course Fox 'News'....last but not least, we have Twitter-Truth -this last one, the former presidents' favorite: 'Tens of thousands of dead people voted for Democrats in Michigan!".....224,000 illegal, undocumented Mexicans voted in Arizona...and half of them were dead!"

The wonderful thing about this, is we now have a multiple of choices from which to select the truth which best fits us best, fits our personal prejudices the most comfortably..

SO -Awash in the waves of “alternative facts” — which began immediately with demonstrably false claims about the size of the inaugural crowd and continue to this day — a natural instinct is to cling to truth as desperately as Winston, the protagonist of George Orwell’s “1984,” the dystopian novel of newspeak and authoritarian control whose sales have spiked since the election:

As Winston writes in his clandestine diary: “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” This view suggests that what matters most for democracy are our ties to the objective reality of facts. If these ties are severed, anything goes: Kellyanne Conway's and Trump's Alternated Facts.. begining to prevail - War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength — the slogans of the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s novel.

WATCH: Dr. Birx appears horrified as Trump suggests disinfectant injections could cure coronavirus

President Donald Trump wondered aloud whether injecting disinfectants into human beings could kill COVID-19........Dr. Trump's suggested 'truth' immediately had millions of gullible Trump-supporters, rushing to pharmacies and Walmart to buy Lysol capsules: Trump-Twitter-Truth?

Today, false slogans bombard us via Twitter. “Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!” Trump tweeted back in 2013. That missive is regularly retweeted. These days, even old lies have nine lives. OR: "This Corona virus is a HOAX! We have maybe 15 cases now..(March 1st), however...by the end of this month it will be 'virtually gone.' (The stock market went up 315 points after that Trump press conference.

........The problem with this view of truth is that it oversimplifies the connection between fact and belief, truth and democratic politics. Obviously we need to know the facts about the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia. But human beings are not hard-wired to objective reality so that the mere existence of a fact dictates what we believe.

POSITIVE NOTE: There is now hope that the old, original 'TRUTH' will re-emerge: