TRUTH AND POLITICS: Are they incompatible?
Why do people feel exempt from truth when politics is the subject?
Are we becoming a nation of liars? People do lie with some frequency but we are generally constrained in our lying by shame and self-respect. It is possible that these constraints now are lifted under the moral leadership of Donald Trump and his cohorts. The truth has become a mere inconvenience on the path to power or gain of one sort or another.
Recently I responded to two essays on the expansive writer’s ghetto that is Medium. (Here I discuss one; the other later.) The writers in each case were attempting to pass off major falsehoods as truth. I voiced my concern over this contempt for the truth through the usual response panel. Instead of honest intellectual response, countering my claims with facts or argument, both authors blocked me. But of course if you intend to propagate lies, you are less likely to be concerned with honest intellectual debate.
This act of blocking and pre-empting honest criticism is symptomatic of American politics in general. (Think of how Republicans from the very get-go attempted to block investigations into Russia’s interference in the presidential election.) Ideology triumphs over truth. It is also a mark of intellectual dishonesty and greed. One is willing to cheat in order to win — exactly what our current administration appears to be doing.
The first author (above) blocked me during my running commentary on her essay, titled ironically “Intellectual & Liberal Speaks Out: Bernie Sanders is a Fraud.” (I think the author is referring to herself as the intellectual and liberal.) She blocked me before I was unable to finish responding.
She writes under the name of S. Novi and she argues that Bernie Sanders is a fraud for a number of reasons. I looked for corroboration for her claims and found that almost all of her statements were either false or gross distortions. As I began to point this fact out she promptly blocked me from adding further comments and from viewing her writing (Note: though blocked I still have access to her writings should I wish by logging out and name-searching.)
I am annoyed by two things here 1) Novi’s complete lack of intellectual honesty and 2) the false claims that other, less critical, readers might accept as truths — and in fact some have (see below).
These two points are especially amplified for me by her statement: “above all, I am a critical thinker; and in investigating an analyzing Sanders, I realized early on: he is a fraud.”
So let’s look at some of this critical thinker’s reasons for claiming Sanders is a fraud.
1) My first question to Novi was: Where is the documentation for this claim?: “ Bernie has also been known for his ‘purity test’ for Democrats that he approved/disapproved of. In his own state of Vermont, the Democrat that was running was a woman and when she didn’t pass his personal ‘litmus test’, he supported the Republican.”
I looked and found nothing. If the present reader has knowledge about this, please present it. I’m not saying Novi is lying in this instance, just that she is unwilling to provide a source, and I can’t find one.
2) Novi claims Sanders does not support gender equality. And for support she refers to Sanders’ 1972 “rape article.” I did find the “rape article.” In it Sanders is attempting to explain how traditional gender roles can perpetuate violence against women (a brief discussion here). Her conclusion? “Bernie hid behind ‘equality’ and yet didn’t really believe in it.” Her only support for this claim is Sanders’ investigation into gender-based violence.
Novi deliberately distorts an honest intellectual query into a perverse attack on women.
3) And then there’s this: “But it’s not just women’s issues that Sanders has a problem with. In a Politifact comparison as to who is actually ‘more progressive’: Hillary or Bernie, Hillary won.”
The so-called Politifact comparison is actually a chart circulating anonymously on Twitter, which Politifact dutifully proceeded to debunk, finding that most of the claims were empty. Sanders did vote to disallow law suits against gun manufacturers and to allow guns in baggage on trains (I don’t know why) and did vote against immigration reform. The rest of the points in the graphic are either false or distortions of fact. Since Novi refers back to Politifact, her source, she would know that most of the claims were false. And she is dishonest in saying the graphic represents a Politifact study and represents the findings of Politifact. It is anonymous propaganda debunked by Politifact.
Noting the writing style and the occasional unidiomatic phrasing and diacritical marks, I must assume that Novi is using English as a second language. From her pen name, I associate her with former east European socialist countries. “Novy” is Russian for “new.” In my experience with people from the former Soviet Bloc socialism in any form is a fate worse than death — except for the GDR. Many Germans in the east miss socialism. I remember one man in the east Berlin district of Friedrichshain remarking, “I have never been to the West and I never want to go.” It is my guess that Novi’s antipathy toward the socialist Sanders stems from this same east European fear of Stalinist-style socialism. And in fact she tears into Sanders for supporting the Sandanistas in the 1980s — the same Sandanistas who overturned a brutal dictatorship.
About Novi’s article one reader commented, “Well reasearched and laid out.” Another wrote, “There are so few points to criticize in your analysis, that I won’t make the attempt.” Talk about your uncritical readers! But at the same time, we as information consumers are time-wise highly challenged and unable to track down sources for every claim we read. Unscrupulous authors on the wide-open internet exploit the time-challenged status of the typical reader. That’s how propaganda works. (There is an implicit argument here for some editorial constraints for publications on Medium, but short of that it is we readers who function as the editorial staff — but not when we’re blocked.)
Dishonesty in politics seems to have hit new highs and in its present form can rightly be called an epidemic. Novi — and others in that class of writer — see lying as a legitimate form of argument. If you’re at the bottom of the barrel, just maybe you can lie your way up.
