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Alternate Truths/Facts vs. Reality

ModernDiogenes

Searching for One Honest Man
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How did we get so messed up?

Our politics, like much of everything else, is f##ked up because we let ourselves get f##ked up. After all, our politics are merely a reflection of our society as a whole. Our current state of ethical thinking, how we deal with facts at issue, etc. it’s a mirror reflecting an image of who we are at the moment, and according to that image we are in a sorry place.

The most telling societal image that points to the issue is the suggestion that there is such a thing as an “alternative fact”.

The worst sort of “alternative fact” being the laughable notion that there is something real in the idea of “my truth”.

Truth, if real, concrete, substantive, belongs to everyone. There are no individual truths. Your perceptions, if actually valid, will be real, substantive, concrete, to anyone who recognizes truth. They aren’t unique to you.

Your perceptions are your own but that doesn’t make them truthful. Metrics; that which can be measured, deduced, communicated to others in strict scientific terms that can be substantiated and reproduced under like circumstances are what truth is. Not opinion.

As long as we are walking around with our “individual truths” we will continue to be this kind and level of f##ked up; socially, culturally, certainly politically.

It’s time we get back to the reality that TRUTH isn’t a personal thing, and there are no such things as “alternative facts”.
 
You are 10 years late with this reality
 
tshade said:
You are 10 years late with this reality
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I’ve been saying this, in various different ways, since my early 20’s. That is a very long time ago.(hasn’t helped though, obviously. ). I’ve gotten a little less polite about it and far more direct as I got older. At this point, because of its nature and lessening time left to do something about it, I’ve gotten to the, “Sit down, shut the #### up and listen.”, stage.

I’d hope it’s not too late.

We, individually, may not be important but this thing of ours, this Constitutional Republic, is. I mean that. In theory, if not in current actual practice, it is still the state of the art in democracy. It is the thing that, if we can still lay claim to greatness, makes that so.

So I truly hope we haven’t screwed the pooch beyond saving and re-establishing it.

Not to mention we’d ALL be better off if we could.
 
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ModernDiogenes said:
Truth, if real, concrete, substantive, belongs to everyone. There are no individual truths. Your perceptions, if actually valid, will be real, substantive, concrete, to anyone who recognizes truth. They aren’t unique to you.
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The obsession for "empirical truth" in politics is an absurd standard which doesn't exist and has never existed. Politics and governing more broadly is about constructing a series of myths to justify the progress and development of your nation. There is no political conclusion which can be derived strictly through moral and logical reasoning - that's why politics exists in the first place.

People who insist moral truths can be derived from political action are the most dangerous people on the planet and are fundamentally untrustworthy.
 

That isn’t factual. It is attempting to justify situational ethics.

Situational ethics, like alternative facts, are misstatements of truth, thus “untruths”.
 
ModernDiogenes said:
That isn’t factual. It is attempting to justify situational ethics.

Situational ethics, like alternative facts, are misstatements of truth, thus “untruths”.
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Of course it's factual.

Do you think global hegemony was achieved by making the most moral and ethical decisions? Is the purpose of the state to do that which most benefits the people of the nation or is the purpose of the state to always act within your strict interpretation of a subjective moral and ethical framework? What informs that framework? Why should we even believe it is the correct one?
 
You have it backwards. Political action was once derived from moral truth. Surely you remember Gary Hart.

It's the twisting of moral truth from an absolute respected by all into a matter of opinion that has brought us here.
 
Trump is directly at fault for this.
 
Michael Cole said:
You have it backwards. Political action was once derived from moral truth. Surely you remember Gary Hart.

It's the twisting of moral truth from an absolute respected by all into a matter of opinion that has brought us here.
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No, what has brought us here is a failing trust in American institutions and the mythology I'm referring to. There is no longer an absolute certainty in the American government. The arc of history, it turns out, does not necessarily always bend toward liberalism and its many assumptions.

Blaming Trump is merely blaming a symptom of a broader disease which is only going to get worse as conditions worsen and the legitimacy of the US liberal order is questioned globally. The old WASP elite class is sickly and fading which is why we now see a power struggle between POC, "meritocratic" technocracy, some vague nativist sentiment, and third worldists. Insofar as political action was derived from moral truth, that moral truth was based on a consensus derived from a largely Christian moral framework and a WASP-driven sociocultural standard.

That framework and standard has lost so much legitimacy that the progressives of today question whether it ever existed at all! Incredible.
 
Gozaburo said:
Blaming Trump is merely blaming a symptom of a broader disease
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Rape was a broader disease before Epstein, so we shouldn't be blaming Epstein for rape?????????????????
Before you respond, think of why I made that example and how it relates to the sentence I was responding to.
 
I'm talking about ethics. Ethics guided politics, not the other way around.

I didn't blame Trump. I blamed the twisting of truth, moral and otherwise, into a matter of opinion. When everything becomes politicized, from the clothes you wear to the stores you frequent, it's easy to dismiss everything as political, and thus, a matter of opinion.
 
SNOWFLAKE said:
Rape was a broader disease before Epstein, so we shouldn't be blaming Epstein for rape?????????????????
Before you respond, think of why I made that example and how it relates to the sentence I was responding to.
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Looking at the absurd conditions we live in and pointing out the absurdities is a fun exercise, but not very informative.
 
Michael Cole said:
I'm talking about ethics. Ethics guided politics, not the other way around.
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Do you think realpolitik is always ethical in a universal sense? I don't think you can demonstrate that.


I agree with you, I'm just pointing out that there is a difference between a political consensus based on national unity and progress and a universal moral and ethical truth.
 
It's a dangerous thing, but people believe what they want to believe. Propaganda is just cover for people to validate their world view, even if reality doesn't align with that world view. Rather than accept the reality of WWI, that a lot of Germans died in a useless war mainly fought because the dictators of the time played with people's lives like they were pieces on a risk board, Germans were willing to believe they really won the war but it was sneaky Jews that stabbed them in the back.

Obviously a very stupid lie that is borderline moronic to believe, but they wanted to believe it. It's the same now. People want to believe these lies, even the most absurd ones.
 
Gozaburo said:
No, what has brought us here is a failing trust in American institutions and the mythology I'm referring to.
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What brought us here was the degradation of the American media with the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine. What we got as a result has been decades of Rightwing media alternative facts, unending fearmongering, and flat-out lies.
 
Gozaburo said:
No, what has brought us here is a failing trust in American institutions and the mythology I'm referring to. There is no longer an absolute certainty in the American government.
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Right. Because the populace has lost its moral and ethical center and rejected critical thinking. The veneer of the civilized human is thin at best. We are animals driven by our innate animal natures to succeed and survive at any cost to others and that worked much better in the Stone Age. Lying, cheating, stealing, grifting, scamming has replaced the rules that made us a communal society and turned us into ugly selfish entitled morally and ethically deficient creatures. The only ones to blame for failing trust in American institutions are the ignorant people who vote only with their wallets and who have come to worship and practice the worst traits.
 
Tettsuo said:
What brought us here was the degradation of the American media with the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine. What we got as a result has been decades of Rightwing media alternative facts, unending fearmongering, and flat-out lies.
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I don't agree.

I think we're just at the end of an era. Liberalism defeated all of its enemies in the 20th century, emancipated pretty much every marginalized group you can think of, continued to wage crusades across the world in the name of liberal democracy and then... kind of just ran out of runway. A combination of time, poor decision making, technology, and changing demographics has changed both the nation and the world, also changing the discourse as a consequence.

As I said, the arc of history does not bend toward liberalism as it turns out and proposed solutions to this problem (like progressivism - do liberalism, but harder!) aren't going to reconcile the fundamental contradictions and civilizational malaise we're facing. I don't think this has anything to do with malicious right wing sources inorganically attacking the consensus. Progressives had been attacking that consensus for 60 years before a right winger even thought about questioning it. What happened is we kind of hit this critical mass of disbelief that the regime can no longer maintain its own legitimacy, which has given us the chaos we have today.
 
Gozaburo said:
Do you think realpolitik is always ethical in a universal sense? I don't think you can demonstrate that.
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You're still seeing things from the wrong side. Ethics are societal. Cheating on your wife used to ruin careers. Felony convictions were a big no-no. Societal ethics checked politics. It no longer does so. Our ethics haven't changed. Cheating and criminality are still unethical (and illegal), but our acceptance of a politicized world allows segments of society to excuse these (and any) behavior as a matter of opinion.

Gozaburo said:
I agree with you, I'm just pointing out that there is a difference between a political consensus based on national unity and progress and a universal moral and ethical truth.
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Sure, but practically, the difference is minimal. Morals and ethics change over time, as they have in our 250 year history. They don't change drastically and certain truths are constitutionally inherent.

Trump hasn't caused all of this, but he is certainly more than simply taking advantage of a situation. Sex scandals used to signal the end of one's career. The list is plenty long with victims of their own libidos. Is this still the case? Gary Hart foolishly had his picture taken with Donna Rice on his foolishly named boat, Monkey Business. Ruined him. Trump is in the Epstein files, he's cheated on his wives, said disgusting things about grabbing women, been found liable for damages from an incident involving sexual assault, etc., etc.

That's just what's happened to ethics. There are millions of people who think the 2020 election was stolen, some of whom no doubt think Obama was born in Kenya. Alt-facts used to be the purview of the grocery store checkout line. It's now mainstream news.
 
I'm going with social media.
 
Nothing about the above accounts for the flat-out lies that a large portion of our populace believes.

Pizzagate was a lie supported by the rightwing media.
Woke-ism was a lie supported by the rightwing media.
Transwoman attacking women in the bathroom was a lie supported by the rightwing media.
They're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs was a lie supported by the rightwing media.
Trump left Biden with a great economy, which was a lie supported by the rightwing media.
Obama was not born in the US was a lie supported by the rightwing media.
Trump is a financial genius was a lie supported by the rightwing media.
Trump won the 2020 election was a lie supported by the rightwing media.
Crime is out of control was a lie supported by the rightwing media.
Feminism has destroyed men was a lie supported by the rightwing media.

This and many more lies have warped the brains of so many people that we've ended up with Trump creating his version of Hitler's Brownshirts, and they're cheering this insanity.

So no, it's not Progressives pushing their beliefs that has created a backlash is the reason for the current state of the US. That's pure cope and misdirection. We have a large portion of the media dedicated to manipulating the masses with fear and lies.
 

People still believe these things are wrong, it's just that the legitimacy of our institutions has been so thoroughly eroded that any critique they leverage against the cult or personality are going to go unheard or - more likely - the masses will create justifications and propaganda to justify why the critique isn't true, lacks context, or is maliciously driven. Ethics can't be enforced or proselytized because the regime is too weak to do so.


I can think of a handful of moral and ethical dilemmas off the top of my head which have happened in the last 250 years which were far more consequential in a vacuum than anything we've seen in the last 8 years. I do agree that what we've seen in the last 8 years is going to have serious long-term historical implications in terms of where the American empire goes, but this is almost entirely driven by legitimacy.
 
Yeah- but such a thing exists in science at least- and even that's being denied. Science may not be ULTIMATE truth- it's changing and growing and revising all the time- but it's the best we know, with the best observations we have to date. That should count for something at least- but it doesn't. We are still talking about the Earth being only 6000 years old, and questioning a century and a half of climate change science, and a century of vaccine technology, and many still think trickle down economics works. Crazy!
 

I think you're kind of just missing the point. We're just living in a time where the paradigm is shifting. I can concede that all of the points you're making a true, but that doesn't tell us anything about why people were eager to believe those things in the first place or why various political actors were already chipping away at the legitimacy of the American empire long before Trump was even a serious political actor.

The issue is extremely complex and far deeper than anti-ideology MAGAism. The old way isn't coming back and frankly I'm not particularly interested in conserving it if it was so weak and lacking that it ceded power to Trump.
 

I'm sorry, but saying that governance and national vision should be based on science is maybe the most banal and uncreative suggestion imaginable. Culture isn't created by nerds in lab coats. Empires aren't forged with empirical truths. The best philosophy, more often than not, is created by eccentric, almost neurotic thinkers who are willing to think outside of what is possible and orienting humanity in that direction. Human beings don't do well in systems where they feel mathematically constrained.

Read Children of Men.
 
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