The Peripatetic Preacher
That clever and wily genius, Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens) in his more cynical guise once said, “Tell the truth or trump—but get the trick.” In other words, the end justifies the means; gain the goal no matter what. In my bridge-playing days, we used to laugh and say, “a peek is worth two finesses.” In other words, if your card skills are not up to snuff, then just peer into your opponent’s hand to gain the needed advantage. The Twain quote takes on a rich added meaning in this year of 2021. When the former roundly disgraced, twice-impeached president, Donald Trump, that master of lies, still tries to make himself relevant to his rabid followers from the bowels of his grand palace in Florida, though he has currently lost his favored Twitter platform, from which his stream of nasty falsehoods used to pour out to his millions of sycophants. He still remains periodically at least in the headlines, though, thank heaven, his pervasive prevarications no longer hog the airwaves as once they did. Twain’s “tell the truth or trump” now suggests that Donald Trump and truth are clearly oxymoronic. Even 111 years after his death, the grand curmudgeon of Hannibal, MO remains the sage we need.
Joe Biden has been president for 50 days, and in that time, not yet two full months, the life of US America has changed astonishingly. No longer must we await the next cringe-worthy 3:00AM tweet from the tiny thumbs of the Donald, denigrating his latest enemies, from the press, to the Dems, to RINOs (Republican in name only) to any who refuse to toe the Trumpian line. We now get near-daily press conferences where facts rule the podium, where decorum is paramount, where questions from reporters are treated with respect and answered with clarity. In these events, truth has become the coin of the realm once again. Of course there are differences of opinion. Of course not everything the press secretary, the redoubtable Ms. Psaki, says is accepted without comeback or disagreement. But no longer are we treated to crowd size whoppers, self- aggrandizing “victories” over a raging pandemic, or monstrous suggestions that we inject ourselves with cleaning products to blunt the horror of COVID-19 and its derivatives. We now instead hear from Anthony Fauci, unfiltered, the nation’s leading and long-time epidemiologist, telling us the truth about the course of the virus, his fears about opening up the country too soon, his glimmers of hope in the face of the crushing blows the country and world have absorbed over the past year. In short, truth is back, and its reappearance is wonderfully welcome.
Perhaps the most famous quotation concerning truth comes from the Gospel of John; you all know it, I am sure. ‘Know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). Far fewer may know that this bit of wisdom was uttered in the midst of a debate with Jesus’s Jewish followers, who had come to accept him as Messiah, but still trying to understand what their newfound faith actually meant. They reply that his claim that truth will free them is quite confusing since they have never been slaves to anyone because their God had freed them long ago in the Exodus. Jesus replies, somewhat cryptically as often in John’s Gospel, that because he is the Son of God, and because the son has a permanent place in the household, unlike the slave who is never a permanent fixture, implies that if they are freed by the Son, then they are “free indeed” (John 8:36). Therefore, the famous quotation is hardly a general claim that all truth makes one free, but rather a claim that belief in the Son of God, Jesus, brings true and complete freedom. However, it is fair to say, I think, that the original context of the quotation has been long left behind, and the maxim has become a specific claim that truth leads inexorably to freedom for us all.
Given our political place in 2021 with a President Biden and a Vice-President Harris, there is little doubt in my mind that truth in all of its features has been reborn. This hardly means that Joe and Kamala will always express the unvarnished truth to us US Americans; they after all are still Democratic politicians, and their proclamations will inevitably be tinged with that particular political bent. They will and certainly already have uttered statements that should not be judged as completely truthful. However, I believe that they can be trusted, along with those they have chosen to represent them, to speak truthfully about the most serious matters that the nation faces. And because that is so, I imagine that such basic truth-telling can lead to freedom, a freedom from confusion, from uncertainty, and for the conviction that facts lead to sharp distinctions between what is correct and incorrect when it comes to science, to reason, and to judgments based on them. The previous administration, because it regularly trafficked in half-truths and lies, too often fulfilled what G.K. Chesterton warned long ago: “Truths turn into dogma the moment they are disputed.” That is to say that when scientific fact like the certain reality of climate change fall into ignorant dispute, as happened during the days of Trump, the dogma of disagreement about climate change became a dangerous and foolhardy dogma that persists, a dogma that the Biden administration is trying mightily to overturn.
Another prescient warning comes from that wise Roman orator and statesmen, Cicero. “The one who has once deviated from the truth, usually commits perjury with as little scruple as they would tell a lie.” Donald Trump’s persistent claims concerning the November election, that he had been cheated out of his “obvious” victory through devious frauds of various kinds, though proven fallacious in over 60 court cases, remains for millions a “fact,” proving Cicero all too correct. And the great French essayist, Montaigne, said, “I speak truth, not as much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more as I grow older.” Truth has a way of coming forth, despite its concealment or obfuscation. John Milton opined, “Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam.” In other words, truth will out, as I think we are now seeing a glimpse of.
I have long found Polonius’s ironic speech in the first act of Hamlet to summarize the speech of a self-aggrandizing fool, plainly Shakespeare’s intent. We are meant to see Polonius for the mountebank that he is, possibly well meaning but hopelessly ridiculous. Perhaps one of the great ironies of the speech is that so many have taken it as some sort of profound wisdom!
And this above all, to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Indeed! If I think only of myself, it is finally impossible for me to be false to anyone else, since I care nothing for them at all. A better summary of Donald Trump’s mode of life could hardly be written. He appears over and again to be only concerned with self, and because that is so, he then can never treat anyone else unfairly, because his self-concern rules out any concern for others. And it follows that problems are never his fault, but must always be blamed on others. Here we see truth twisted so as not to include others in the truth, making out that self-truth to be but a lie. This is what makes Joe Biden the remarkable human being that he is; the truth is not merely about him, but is necessarily involved with other people. For him, there can be no truth that does not reckon with the needs of others.
I close with a fine quotation from that early humanist, John Locke. “To love truth for truth’s sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.” Here, it seems, is how truth may indeed set us free. Below all the virtues lies truth, that reasoned and beloved reality that forms the foundation of the virtuous life, that bedrock authenticity that drives out unreasoned and dangerously misguided fictions on which nothing can be founded save shaky and tottering misrepresentations. I see evidence of the banishment of such sand-based structures the longer I live in this new world of the search for real truth by which we all, rich and poor, Black and White, finally may begin to live.
(Images from Wikimedia Commons)
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