Truthlessness
Like everybody else, I've been trying to figure out how the US came to be led by it's worst citizens. Part of the story is what I'm choosing to call "Truthlessness."
It's not that the truth is not told. It's not that the lies are thicker than the blackflies in Maine. It's that there is no sense that there is a truth to understand. There is no science. There are no facts. The Leader of America and all his appointees just think certain things based on the fact that they think them. It's enough to think something is real - then it's real.
And that's okay for hateful greedy reality TV stars and assorted internet whackjobs. But now that's the decision-making that's running America. The American Leader says he was wiretapped by the previous administration, so it's true. No amount of it not being true matters - if you says it's so, that's it.
The confirmation hearings for the new cabinet was dark humor. They could literally have shown up in overalls and 'answered' questions in Russian - nothing they said mattered. The Leader's stooges in the Senate had the votes - except in the case of the smarmy new Supreme Court Justice. I that case they lost the vote so they changed the rules.
Nothing that any of them said matters because there is no such thing as Truth. So Betsy de Voss gets to be Education Secretary, in charge of the American public school system. She's never taught in or attended a public school. She thinks the Poors are given too much school and wants to withdraw school by making education at all levels a pay-for-play. You want learning? Pony up.
The fact that education is the only thing that allows social or economic mobility is not relevant. The fact that she demonstrably knows nothing about the topic of education but hates public learning is not relevant. She thinks something and her inherited wealth makes it true.
Rick Perry wanted to abolish the Energy Department when he twice ran for president. Before his confirmation hearing he had to be told what the department does. Don't matter. There is no Truth.
Ben Carson was a sleepy-eyed former doctor. Now he's the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Why? Because he grew up in a city? It doesn't matter that he thinks the Egyptian pyramids were used to store grain - even though they're made of solid rock. It doesn't matter that he has no more than a passing New York Post level of knowledge of Housing or Urban Affairs. He's reliably on-side and lives the shared dream of Truthlessness.
The rest are the same. The American Leader and his government are there for their personal gain. They want money and power. But they can't earn money and power because they have no knowledge or skills. But they are ideologues who can tell the Poors and Rubes enough non-information to get elected and appointed.
To say they tell lies implies that there is a truth that they purposefully deny. To them, there may or may not be a truth, but telling a self-serving story is always better. For example, there may or may not be anthropogenic climate change going on, but if it is happening it doesn't help them. So they deny it and call it a conspiracy theory. Does it matter that it's true and they're dooming their grandchildren to living on a despoiled planet? Please. What matters is that they can stop doing things that are not in their economic or political interest. They can help their friends to some short-term coal cash.
But it becomes deadly very quickly when the American Leader starts to use his Truthlessness internationally. To foreign leaders, truth matters. When North Korea is threatened by an "armada," it could lead to a war which would cost hundreds or thousands of lives. That's Truth. It doesn't matter that being tough on Kim Jung Un plays well with the flyover states.
And in case you were wondering, there is NO military option with North Korea. The city of Seoul, South Korea (population 10 million) is within artillery distance from North Korea. North Korea has a huge stockpile of chemical weapons that it can fire via artillery at the city. If consulted, South Korea would never allow a strike against NK - it would mean the death of hundreds of thousands.
Big the Truthless American Leader doesn't know or care. The President of China had to explain the history of Korea to him. And he admitted that he didn't know 10 minutes of the history of a country he's sending warships to intimidate - or worse. A foreign leader had to explain it to him - where was the American State Department to explain this stuff? Will he just not listen to them? And what did the head of a communist super-power tell him? What Chinese story does the American Leader now believe? And does it fit with the Russian stories he believes?
What difference does history make, anyway? It's just facts, and there are no facts.
Imagine waking up in a world that you just make up as you go. Somebody tells you some bad people did stuff, you just go with the first thing you think. You don't try to know who they are or what they want or anything like that. They're bad and that's that. Hit them.
Truthlessness.
It's not that the truth is not told. It's not that the lies are thicker than the blackflies in Maine. It's that there is no sense that there is a truth to understand. There is no science. There are no facts. The Leader of America and all his appointees just think certain things based on the fact that they think them. It's enough to think something is real - then it's real.
And that's okay for hateful greedy reality TV stars and assorted internet whackjobs. But now that's the decision-making that's running America. The American Leader says he was wiretapped by the previous administration, so it's true. No amount of it not being true matters - if you says it's so, that's it.
The confirmation hearings for the new cabinet was dark humor. They could literally have shown up in overalls and 'answered' questions in Russian - nothing they said mattered. The Leader's stooges in the Senate had the votes - except in the case of the smarmy new Supreme Court Justice. I that case they lost the vote so they changed the rules.
Nothing that any of them said matters because there is no such thing as Truth. So Betsy de Voss gets to be Education Secretary, in charge of the American public school system. She's never taught in or attended a public school. She thinks the Poors are given too much school and wants to withdraw school by making education at all levels a pay-for-play. You want learning? Pony up.
The fact that education is the only thing that allows social or economic mobility is not relevant. The fact that she demonstrably knows nothing about the topic of education but hates public learning is not relevant. She thinks something and her inherited wealth makes it true.
Rick Perry wanted to abolish the Energy Department when he twice ran for president. Before his confirmation hearing he had to be told what the department does. Don't matter. There is no Truth.
Ben Carson was a sleepy-eyed former doctor. Now he's the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Why? Because he grew up in a city? It doesn't matter that he thinks the Egyptian pyramids were used to store grain - even though they're made of solid rock. It doesn't matter that he has no more than a passing New York Post level of knowledge of Housing or Urban Affairs. He's reliably on-side and lives the shared dream of Truthlessness.
The rest are the same. The American Leader and his government are there for their personal gain. They want money and power. But they can't earn money and power because they have no knowledge or skills. But they are ideologues who can tell the Poors and Rubes enough non-information to get elected and appointed.
To say they tell lies implies that there is a truth that they purposefully deny. To them, there may or may not be a truth, but telling a self-serving story is always better. For example, there may or may not be anthropogenic climate change going on, but if it is happening it doesn't help them. So they deny it and call it a conspiracy theory. Does it matter that it's true and they're dooming their grandchildren to living on a despoiled planet? Please. What matters is that they can stop doing things that are not in their economic or political interest. They can help their friends to some short-term coal cash.
But it becomes deadly very quickly when the American Leader starts to use his Truthlessness internationally. To foreign leaders, truth matters. When North Korea is threatened by an "armada," it could lead to a war which would cost hundreds or thousands of lives. That's Truth. It doesn't matter that being tough on Kim Jung Un plays well with the flyover states.
And in case you were wondering, there is NO military option with North Korea. The city of Seoul, South Korea (population 10 million) is within artillery distance from North Korea. North Korea has a huge stockpile of chemical weapons that it can fire via artillery at the city. If consulted, South Korea would never allow a strike against NK - it would mean the death of hundreds of thousands.
Big the Truthless American Leader doesn't know or care. The President of China had to explain the history of Korea to him. And he admitted that he didn't know 10 minutes of the history of a country he's sending warships to intimidate - or worse. A foreign leader had to explain it to him - where was the American State Department to explain this stuff? Will he just not listen to them? And what did the head of a communist super-power tell him? What Chinese story does the American Leader now believe? And does it fit with the Russian stories he believes?
What difference does history make, anyway? It's just facts, and there are no facts.
Imagine waking up in a world that you just make up as you go. Somebody tells you some bad people did stuff, you just go with the first thing you think. You don't try to know who they are or what they want or anything like that. They're bad and that's that. Hit them.
Truthlessness.
posted by Abraham Binder at 11:38 AM
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