Another January 6 is on the horizon. Another anniversary. Another chance to watch the videos, listen to the words (“Hang Mike Pence”). And yet, there are a disturbing number of our fellow humans who today will insist that what your lying eyes saw did not happen.
So let’s review truth. What is truth? To start, let us recall the exchange between Chuck Todd and KellyAnne Conway when, soon after Trump’s inauguration, the White House Press Secretary, commenting on the crowd size on the National Mall, uttered what Todd referred to as a “provable falsehood,” to which Conway responded by saying the Press Secretary was just offering “alternative facts.” Todd, incredulous, reminded Conway that “alternative facts” are not facts.
“Truth” is actually a matter of serious discussion in the legendary novel “1984” in which Orwell writes about the nation of Oceana and its “Ministry of Truth.” I offer the following observations from a 2019 Atlantic article by George Packer:
“Orwell never intended his novel to be a prediction, only a warning. And it’s as a warning that 1984 keeps finding new relevance. The week of Donald Trump’s inauguration, when the president’s adviser Kellyanne Conway justified his false crowd estimate by using the phrase alternative facts, the novel returned to the best-seller lists. A theatrical adaptation was rushed to Broadway. The vocabulary of Newspeak went viral. An authoritarian president who stood the term fake news on its head, who once said, “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,” has given 1984 a whole new life.”
Truth is actually a very basic concept for the lived experience of the individual. At the reptilian level, truth is what is “there”, right in front of you. As I write these words, my laptop is sitting on a stand that in turn is mounted on a brown desk. It is a matter of indisputable truth that my desk is brown. Why? Because my learned experience teaches me what is brown as opposed to yellow. But if someone joined me in my office right now and insisted that my desk is yellow, over and over again, I have two choices. I can retain my conviction that my desk is brown or I can give in to my visitor and say, “ok”, you’re right, my desk is yellow.”
What is happening to you and I, right before our very eyes, is that we are confronted with fellow members of the human family who no longer trust the truth others take for granted. And why is this happening, now, in this moment in both America and around the world? Because it is time.
What?! The “truth” about our present moment is that we’ve been here before. We’ve been here perhaps in smaller numbers, but we’ve been here. For the entirety of human history, we humans have had moments when we “can’t handle the truth.” Why do you think Aaron Sorkin included that legendary phrase in his captivating movie “A Few Good Men?” Because in that moment on a witness stand in a military courtroom, Col. Nathan R. Jessup reminded us that “truth” is often messy, uncomfortable, unfathomable. Jessup reminded us that “deep down in places you don't talk about at parties” there are eternal truths that we either accept or reject, with the inevitable consequences that come with rejection.
The example of the color of my desk is of course trivial. There are countless everyday examples about truth. In my line of work, we have a concept called “judicial notice.” It is a concept actually written into our lawbooks. It is a concept that permits a legal case to be based on matters of universal acceptance, universal truth. The written law thus actually defines “TRUTH”:
Facts and propositions that are of such common knowledge…that they cannot reasonably be the subject of dispute; Facts and propositions that are not reasonably subject to dispute and are capable of immediate and accurate determination by resort to sources of reasonably indisputable accuracy.”
My friends: we are at this moment in our lives faced with the sad reality that for many of our fellow humans, the “facts and propositions” you and I accept as truth are not truth.
And so, on the eve of another January 6 anniversary, how is it possible that for many, January 6, 2021 was something other than what I saw with my lyin’ eyes? With the facts (yes, facts) that have been disclosed about that day, did not the following happen?
** Before election day, Trump publicly stated that if he did not win the election, it will have been stolen from him;
** After election day, Trump claimed the election was fraudulent and that he had actually won;
** Trump filed well over 60 lawsuits in federal and state court challenging the veracity of the election with every lawsuit rejected as meritless;
** Trump was told by his attorney general (the chief law enforcement official in America and a fellow right wing Republican) that the election was legitimate;
** Trump continued to insist that the election was a fraud and along with his most ardent supporters, hatched a plan to challenge the formalities for certifying the election, through a reading of the United States Constitution that had never been authorized;
** Trump sent out a communication to his supporters to gather in Washington on January 6, 2021; thousands heeded the call; many have testified under oath that they showed up for a Trump speech that day because he called them to action;
** Trump was aware of the anger in the crowd he had assembled on January 6, 2021; he was aware of the weapons and firearms they were carrying; he insisted that the metal detectors be withdrawn; he gave a speech where he urged those folks to march to the Capitol building;
** Once the illegal breaking and entering had taken place on January 6, 2021, Trump sat in his Oval office-adjacent dining room, enjoyed the televised breaking and entering, the assault on capitol police, the pictures of the gallows being set up for the hanging of the VP, and purposely did nothing to stop it.
If any human being challenges what I just wrote, their truth is not my truth. If they agree with what I wrote, we can debate whether or not Trump aided or abetted an insurrection or rebellion. We can have an honest debate based on an agreed set of facts. We cannot have an honest debate if the person across from me claims the television pictures are fake. We cannot have an honest debate if the person across from me refuses to acknowledge the violence and that the folks who engaged in that violence did so in the name of Trump (after all, scores of them have so admitted in sworn statements to law enforcement).
So there you have it. Truth.
Human history of course is filled with the outer bounds of this discussion. There have been “flat earthers” for centuries (although the “Flat Earth Society” was not founded until 1956). There are millions of the human family who do not believe humans have ever been to the Moon. They believe the videos are fake.
Truth has also been attacked when people are in fear. And so we have “conspiracy theories.” Of course, there are legitimate allegations of evil conspiracy. There are literally thousands of brilliant people who now seriously contend, backed by compelling evidence, that JFK was shot by two people, in an elaborate plot involving Cuba, the CIA and organized crime bosses.
Truth thus has many layers to it. The facts of the physical world (the color of trees, the direction of travel as being north, south, east or west, the sun as the source of natural light during the day) are matters of truth.
But truth is also something that requires human beings to “believe” or to “trust.” I believe Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon and uttered the words “one small step” because I saw the moment on television and refuse to believe that what I saw was fake. Why my refusal to believe that what I saw was a fake? Because I trusted the folks who placed the images on my TV screen. Because I trusted that when Neil Armstrong returned to Earth and spoke on live television about his experiences on the Moon, he was not lying to me.
“Truth” is ultimately the most basic of ideas that allow us to be human beings in community with one another. But as with any idea, it can contract a virus that eats at its health. Today, in this moment in our lives, truth is ill. It is not the first time. Many of us have been captivated by podcasts and books (led by my friend, historian Steve Ross, and by Rachel Maddow) about the late 1930’s and early 1940’s when Americans from coast to coast, including in the Halls of Congress, supported the Nazis in Germany and genuinely believed that the Jews threatened their way of life. Those folks were guided by a truth only they saw.
We are in another such moment in 2024. There are millions of Americans who see in Donald Trump a savior. There are millions of Americans who see Donald Trump as Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini rolled into one; as a sick, mentally unbalanced, wanna-be dictator. How is it possible for such extremes of truth to exist in fellow human beings?
The answer to that last question is best left to psychologists and to history. I do not know how or when, if ever, we will return to a society where the fringe truths return to, yes, the fringe.
I do know that “truth” is a foundational matter for human understanding. Truth is not an expression of agreement as to all things. That is why there are “facts” and “opinions.” Human beings are unique among the animal kingdom because we can disagree and co-exist. We can and do disagree on countless matters related to human behavior and how we should relate to each other. But we disagree based upon a starting point of agreed facts or “truths.”
This discussion about truth is admittedly a surface level set of observations. I have not even addressed the human tendency toward violence and war based upon real and imagined histories, often grounded in anything except the truth. The Middle East? Russia and Ukraine? The list goes on and on.
My hope is that those for whom “truth” is “universal” will prevail, peacefully, and that those who question the truth that I believe exists, will find their way back to a place where we can all live. That is my hope for an America that today is rightfully obsessed with this phenomenon called Trump. 2024 will undoubtedly be the year of judgment. 2024 will certainly be a year like few others in the history of our world. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.