Truth is not Truth

The latest fracas over words aptly illustrates how "liberals" -- what passes for "left" in the United States -- are engaging in civic eristic.

Eris was the Greek goddess of chaos, strife and discord. Eristic is the sophistical and malicious use of words, not for the purpose of dialogue and dialectic but to destroy the possibility of all argument.

Words are the foundation of civil society (Aristotle) and eristic seeks to undermine the state, not by using words to reflect discord but by, sowing discord among words themselves.  All revolutions, says Thucydides, begin with a corruption of language.

"TRUTH IS NOT TRUTH" blare the headlines in affected exasperation and despair.  Giuliani is Orwell!  Last year it was "alternative facts" and now "truth is not truth"!  The implication -- if it can barely be said that -- is that Trump's administration is depraved beyond the pale. 

John Hurt as Caligula affecting mock shock at the duplicity of mankind comes to mind.  What shines through is the blatant dishonesty of the press

What Rudolf Giuliani (the president's personal lawyer) said was that he would advise Trump against "testifying" in the special counsel's investigation into a plethora of issues relating to Trump's presidential campaign and official acts.  Answering a reporter's question, Giuliani stated, "when you tell me that, ‘You know, he should testify because he’s going to tell the truth and he shouldn’t worry,’ well, that’s so silly because it’s somebody’s version of the truth. Not the truth.”

“Truth is truth,” the reporter insisted. 

“No, it isn’t truth. Truth isn’t truth,” Giuliani replied as the reporter, one Todd, buried his head in his hands.

And so another meme was spawned.

However, all meaning is contextual and, in context, it is plain as day that Giuliani was speaking about testimony and "versions of truth."

Have Todd and all the editors who approved his copy never heard of a jury trial?  Have they never watched Perry Mason on television or seen Witness for the Prosecution or Tweleve Angry men?   Can the High Poobahs of our mass media be so utterly forgetful and oblivious as to what takes place before petit and grand juries?

In case they have, the Chipsters, will remind them.  At a trial, different witnesses testify as to things they have seen, heard or done.  They do not always agree.  They present different versions of what they allege to be the fact(s) of the matter.  It is up to the jury to decide which version states the true facts.  That is what a verdict is: the jury's declaration (verus-dictum)of what the true facts are.   Until then, there is nothing but a heap of "alternative facts."

Mr. Todd's supposed "question" simply assumed that one anticipated version of the facts was the true version. It was that ad hoc, unilateral, unfounded assumption that Giuliani challenged with his reply.  In context, Giuliani's "truth is not truth" had two-fingered quote marks around it and was intended to dispute Todd's  simplistic and plainly idiotic assertion that his selected facts were truth, truth and nothing but the truth.

The New York Times, the Guardian and other paragons of the mass mudia, are not reporting but distorting -- and they are doing so in what can only be inferred to be knowing malice.  It may well be that Trump "started it" but that is no excuse for further degrading this country's political discourse.

More fundamentally, the fact of the matter is that there is no truth that is attainable by humans.  What the paragons of the media might want to recall is that Socrates was put to death for saying precisely that. Ev Oida Oti Oudev Oida --  I know only that I do not know.

If "truth were truth" then all disputes would have ended millenia ago.  But truth is not truth and those who say it is are engaged in the tyrants' game of asserting what the truth is and then punishing people for what can -- they say -- "only" be taken as a perverted and malicious denial of "truth"

Perhaps Mr. Todd would care to read David Hume's On Human Understanding. In fact, there are no "facts."  In the natural sciences there are "facts" which may be taken as empirically established.  Even here, the establishing is provisional and dependent on the soundness and accuracy of the methodology used.  In anything to do with the humanities -- including so-called "sociology" -- empirical factual certainty is a unicorn. Certainly any trial lawyer can tell you as much and it is judicially well recognized that eye-witness testimony is the least reliable of all. 

It is not cynical to deny the ascertainment of truth.  It is arrogant and tyrannical to assert it as established.

Because Americans have a congenital horror or prepositional phrases or subordinate clauses and because they look for the quickest most "business like" way of saying things, they come up with regrettable phrases like "alternative facts."  This cheapened way of speaking litters everything from Supreme Court opinion to the yellowest of journalism.  But even when it was clear that Giuliani was talking about competing versions of facts, the press seizes the occasion to engage in eristic.

In the most fundamental way, the liberal press has become utterly illiberal.

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