Should Facts Interfere With Our Understanding of the Truth?

Rob Meyne

  • Sept. 5, 2019
  • 3 min read

There is an old joke about the three biggest lies: two can live as cheaply as one, check’s in the mail, and… well, the third, the punchline, isn’t appropriate for polite company. But the point resonates: there are many dominant beliefs today, as throughout history, that simply aren’t true.

As a technique of political rhetoric, the “Big Lie” can be traced at least as far back as Goebbels, and has been championed and perfected by disciples of Saul Allinsky, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and various political elites seeking to gain control of your life and that of your dog.

Unfortunately, millions of people who, disturbingly, have the right to vote, make their decisions based on information that’s simply untrue.

(As an aside, I searched “images big lie” and one of the results was a picture of President Obama. Just him, alone. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”)

Obama and gun-grabbers of all descriptions are keen to say, following the latest mass shooting, “this doesn’t happen in other countries.” Nice line, but just doesn’t happen to be true. Of the top mass murders in global history, most, 32 out of 50, were in other countries. Which isn’t to say 18 out of 50 should be a point of pride. When it comes to mass shootings, zero would be a good number.

The Trump tax cut benefited many entities, as discussed here, but the notion that it “only benefited billionaires and corporations” is another big lie. Most middle-income taxpayers got a cut, although others live in states with high income taxes that are no longer deductible on their federal returns (through the tax code, people in NV and FL and TX used to support profligacy in places like NY and IL). Nothing stops Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, or Bernie “If your uncle was this crazy you’d lock him in the attic” Sanders from saying only millionaires got a cut.

“We’re running out of oil” is another big lie. Is oil, technically, a limited resource? Only in the same way that grains of sand are in limited supply. Today, we have more proven oil reserves than we did twenty years ago. And it isn’t because ET and his sister, DT, dropped by our galaxy for a quick pecan log at a Stuckey’s and left some fossil fuels behind. We have just gotten better at finding and extracting it. On this point, if you haven’t yet read “Sapiens,” in which this and many other relevant issues are elucidated, do yourself a favor and do so. You can thank me later.

The notion that Trump colluded with Russia to fix the election, of course, is not only a lie, but one that is especially ironic given that the only candidate proven to have worked with Russia, and other foreign nationals, to swing the election was the Hildebeast herself. Again, the left accuses others of doing what they do. It’s called projection, and they are masters at it.

Why does the left assume everyone on the right is racist? Because they see the world through lenses of gender, race, religion, and national origin, so assume others do as well.

Consider: when the president was recently accused of a racist tweet about the “squad,” and stories described them as people of color, I had no idea if that was even true. It had simply never occurred to me to notice, much less remember, what Rashida Tlaib looks like. Nor do I care.

We will be looking at more examples in the days to come, but in the meantime, this: How should we conduct ourselves in a world where people are immune to facts? The web and social media and mobile devices have made us, technically, more connected than at any time in history. Yet it would be hard to argue that we are better informed. Certainly, if the definition of “better” implies “more accurately” we are probably more poorly informed by the day. We are in uncharted territory here.

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