The Crusade Against Truth

Soon after Donald Trump was elected, CNN released a powerful new ‘Facts First’ ad Campaign series featuring an onscreen image of an apple with a voiceover narrating the following words:

This is an apple. Some people might try to tell you that it’s a banana. They might scream, ‘Banana, banana, banana’ over and over again. They might put banana in all caps. You might even start to believe it’s a banana, but it’s not. This is an apple.

The attempt by CNN and others to reinstate the definition of truth as a function of an objective not subjective reality is praiseworthy. But the ‘facts first’ strategy, while admirable, does not address the origins of the crusade against the truth, which started, not with the inauguration of Donald Trump, but with an intellectual movement that began in Europe long before Donald Trump’s grandfather Frederick Trump was operating brothels in British Columbia.

Make America Think Again

Every nation was created by either an accident of war, tribal assertions, or arbitrary geographic lines drawn by colonial powers; Except for the United States.

The United States was built around a range of ideas with ‘reason’ as its primary source of authority. It was the first nation-state to give form to enlightenment ideals including liberty, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.

Objectivity became the standard of appraisal and armed with a predictable form of justice, society prospered economically and socially. The system worked because it was grounded in a definition of truth and reality that existed independently of human perception.

But of course, men are not objective and nature must be mitigated by compassionate policy.  ‘Survival of the fittest’ only works if your standard of value is strength and intellect. But what about the heart and spirit?

Reason vs. Romanticism

The sterility of reason and intellect proved soul-killing and inevitably yielded to another human reflex- emotion. This led to a counter-movement known as Romanticism.   Unlike reason which gave precedence to intellect and logic, Romanticism elevated man’s emotions, granting them the status of absolute truth. Perception became reality, and facts became ‘subject to interpretation. ‘

The Age for Irrationality

Romanticism as a philosophical movement started in Germany in the late 18^th century and it emphasized emotional awareness as a pre-requisite to the betterment of society.

While the Enlightenment stressed that the universe was run by fixed laws and that reality was something we were encouraged to discover and master,  the Romantics saw reality as a social construction. An apple is an apple or it can be a banana if we all collectively decide that, it is ‘in fact’ -a banana.

The universe according to the philosophy of the romantics is a single interconnected whole (we are all one). Reason and rationality, the Romantics might argue caters to a highly specialized psychological profile (the individualist) and encourage the disintegration of social units. It is sterile and objective and devoid of compassion.

Romanticism, on the other hand,  with its emphasis on emotion was actually, very romantic. It was a view of existence that was more interested in the reality that transcended time and space. Romanticism was mysticism without the institution of religion. It appealed to our spiritual impulses in a way that the age of reason did not.

But in the realm of politics, Romanticism was anything but romantic. It led to the slow erosion of our founding principles as objectivity has gradually been replaced with collective subjectivity, reason with pragmatism, Individual rights with identity politics, and truth with consensus.

By shifting our standard of reality Romanticism helped to usher in two of the deadliest forms of political tyranny known to modern man- Nazism and Communism. Both political theories were essentially outgrowths of the philosophy of Romanticism.

Once our definition of truth is made subjective, then whoever controls our perceptions will control the truth and by extension have all the power.

Now that we have accepted the notion of truth as non-existent, or relative, or a function of human perception and therefore subject to manipulation and interpretation, we should stop wondering how we got here and ask,  on what basis can we possibly launch a resistance against those who tell us that apples are bananas?

On what basis can we protest, after we have disarmed ourselves of the most important weapon we have against tyranny- Objective truth.

Without a clear definition of truth and reality, objective laws and individual rights cannot be preserved. Any government that is more interested in delivering your group’s vote, instead of protecting your individual rights, is a government that can only rule according to the dictates of the biggest baddest gang.

And that’s the truth.