Highlighted by Aparna Mukherjee
We’re not living through a crisis about what is true, we’re living through a crisis about how we know whether something is true. We’re not disagreeing about facts, we’re disagreeing about epistemology. The “establishment” version of epistemology is, “We use evidence to arrive at the truth, vetted by independent verification (but trust us when we tell you that it’s all been independently verified by people who were properly skeptical and not the bosom buddies of the people they were supposed to be fact-checking).”
We are all tired. There’s a self-protective numbness that sets in when inundated with horrors on a daily basis; I understand that. But the president of the United States being credibly accused of rape — again — is not news-of-the-day or just another wrong in a long line of misdeeds. It’s a crime, it’s a reminder of how dangerous this person is, and it’s a message to all American women that our bodies can be hurt, grabbed, assaulted, and mistreated without recourse.