It should come as no surprise to anyone who reads me that I am, to put it incredibly mildly, saddened by the election results. Donald Trump will return to the White House as the 47th President of the United States.
There’s a lot I am sad and worried about. I can’t list everything here–the list would be far too long–but I want instead to focus on something that is perhaps overlooked in the deluge of issues his victory presents.
Truth.
The concept of an objective truth, where we can determine with certainty that something either happened or it didn’t, or a certain statistic is accurate or it is not, or that something exists or does not–that’s going to die. He’s already done this in so many ways when he was the 45th president (his inauguration was attended by more people than President Obama’s, to name one of the first lies) and when he was a candidate (Haitian migrants are eating the pets of residents in Ohio, to name one of his more recent ones) that I can say with complete certainty that he will lie again.
The thing is…if Truth was wounded last time he was in office, I fear he will finish the job this time and kill it entirely.
For example…
As of this writing, inflation sits at 2.6% (this is from the consumer price index in October of 2024). Its recent highest point was in June of 2022, when it was at a whopping 9.1%. Inflation did indeed spike under President Biden, and remains higher now than it generally was under the previous Trump Presidency, when it averaged at 1.9%. So that’s true. Inflation has been coming down for years, but it did spike a year and a half ago, and Biden was president when it did.
Of course, the average inflation rate under President Obama, Trump’s predecessor, was 1.4%, so under Trump, the inflation rate crept upward slightly. I’m not making a claim that this means Trump allowed rampant inflation, because that would be silly. I am, however, heaping scorn on Trump’s claim that he made at the time that he “inherited a mess” from Obama. He did not. He is lying when he says that.
Another example…
In a direct quote from a Trump post, he claims that Vice President Harris “allowed almost 14,000 MURDERERS to freely and openly roam our Country.” This is a lie. The data he is quoting covers 40 years. It also includes people who are incarcerated.
This is quite simply a lie. It is not a reinterpretation of facts, it is not an opinion, it is not a perspective. It is a lie. It is not true. He lied about this to try to smear Harris. It is a lie.
I could go on for quite some time (a Washington Post fact checker estimates Trump told over 30,000 lies over a four years period) but the point I am making is not just that Trump lies.
It is that the concept of truth–that there is a knowable, objective truth in the world–is under attack. His supporters do not care that what he says is not, cannot be true (how could the U.S. passing tariffs POSSIBLY compel another country to pay us money? I mean, HOW could that even remotely be true?) because the idea of truth no longer matters. There is no truth other than what Dear Leader says, even if what he says today contradicts what he said yesterday. TikTok is a scourge that needs to be banned–no, it’s a good thing and I’m going to protect it. Cryptocurrency is a scam–no, it’s the future of money and you should all invest in it. Nothing is true because there is no such thing.
But wait. There may be a hidden benefit to all this.
If Trump’s followers (and let’s be honest…there are millions upon millions) believe what he says as truth, then consider the following:
Trump has promised to mass deport fifteen million people from the U.S. He ran on that promise, he had supporters wave signs saying “Mass Deportation Now,” he built a coalition on that promise.
But doing that will be hard. Oh, it will also be horribly immoral and unethical, and also probably illegal, but none of those things have ever stopped him or even given him pause. No, the fact that it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to carry out this promise is one to remember.
So…he won’t. Because he doesn’t need to.
He simply needs to have a few dozen poor, wretched souls rounded up, their pictures taken by Fox news correspondents, their tattooed bodies loaded onto vans while breathless coverage by a white anchor explains “Trump rids the country of these illegal criminals!”
And then he claims he’s fixed it. The bad people are all gone. He can tell his people to look around and notice how much safer their communities are, and they will nod their heads and agree it’s much better now ever since Trump cleaned house.
In short, he doesn’t NEED to deport 15 million people. He just needs to say he has.
Are you saying his supporters will call him out on this obvious lie when they can see with their own eyes how many illegals remain in their communities?
This man lied about a PHYSICAL WALL and his supporters believed him. This man lied about an ATTACK ON THE CAPITOL and his followers swallowed it. Things we have seen with our own eyes he has denied happening, and the MAGA universe has nodded with his pronouncements. Trump is the arbiter of what is true. So what need is there to actually DO the things he promised?
I know, it’s a strange defense. To say that he won’t need to be evil since he can just claim to be and that’s good enough is an odd comfort.
Trump can and will take credit for a recovering economy and a low crime rate which the country enjoys under Biden. He can claim to have fixed the immigration problem. And he can do so by doing precisely NOTHING. It will be a lie, but perhaps, in this case, the death of truth may be the only way our country lives.
Be seeing you!
There’s a lot I am sad and worried about. I can’t list everything here–the list would be far too long–but I want instead to focus on something that is perhaps overlooked in the deluge of issues his victory presents.
Truth.
The concept of an objective truth, where we can determine with certainty that something either happened or it didn’t, or a certain statistic is accurate or it is not, or that something exists or does not–that’s going to die. He’s already done this in so many ways when he was the 45th president (his inauguration was attended by more people than President Obama’s, to name one of the first lies) and when he was a candidate (Haitian migrants are eating the pets of residents in Ohio, to name one of his more recent ones) that I can say with complete certainty that he will lie again.
The thing is…if Truth was wounded last time he was in office, I fear he will finish the job this time and kill it entirely.
For example…
As of this writing, inflation sits at 2.6% (this is from the consumer price index in October of 2024). Its recent highest point was in June of 2022, when it was at a whopping 9.1%. Inflation did indeed spike under President Biden, and remains higher now than it generally was under the previous Trump Presidency, when it averaged at 1.9%. So that’s true. Inflation has been coming down for years, but it did spike a year and a half ago, and Biden was president when it did.
Of course, the average inflation rate under President Obama, Trump’s predecessor, was 1.4%, so under Trump, the inflation rate crept upward slightly. I’m not making a claim that this means Trump allowed rampant inflation, because that would be silly. I am, however, heaping scorn on Trump’s claim that he made at the time that he “inherited a mess” from Obama. He did not. He is lying when he says that.
Another example…
In a direct quote from a Trump post, he claims that Vice President Harris “allowed almost 14,000 MURDERERS to freely and openly roam our Country.” This is a lie. The data he is quoting covers 40 years. It also includes people who are incarcerated.
This is quite simply a lie. It is not a reinterpretation of facts, it is not an opinion, it is not a perspective. It is a lie. It is not true. He lied about this to try to smear Harris. It is a lie.
I could go on for quite some time (a Washington Post fact checker estimates Trump told over 30,000 lies over a four years period) but the point I am making is not just that Trump lies.
It is that the concept of truth–that there is a knowable, objective truth in the world–is under attack. His supporters do not care that what he says is not, cannot be true (how could the U.S. passing tariffs POSSIBLY compel another country to pay us money? I mean, HOW could that even remotely be true?) because the idea of truth no longer matters. There is no truth other than what Dear Leader says, even if what he says today contradicts what he said yesterday. TikTok is a scourge that needs to be banned–no, it’s a good thing and I’m going to protect it. Cryptocurrency is a scam–no, it’s the future of money and you should all invest in it. Nothing is true because there is no such thing.
But wait. There may be a hidden benefit to all this.
If Trump’s followers (and let’s be honest…there are millions upon millions) believe what he says as truth, then consider the following:
Trump has promised to mass deport fifteen million people from the U.S. He ran on that promise, he had supporters wave signs saying “Mass Deportation Now,” he built a coalition on that promise.
But doing that will be hard. Oh, it will also be horribly immoral and unethical, and also probably illegal, but none of those things have ever stopped him or even given him pause. No, the fact that it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to carry out this promise is one to remember.
So…he won’t. Because he doesn’t need to.
He simply needs to have a few dozen poor, wretched souls rounded up, their pictures taken by Fox news correspondents, their tattooed bodies loaded onto vans while breathless coverage by a white anchor explains “Trump rids the country of these illegal criminals!”
And then he claims he’s fixed it. The bad people are all gone. He can tell his people to look around and notice how much safer their communities are, and they will nod their heads and agree it’s much better now ever since Trump cleaned house.
In short, he doesn’t NEED to deport 15 million people. He just needs to say he has.
Are you saying his supporters will call him out on this obvious lie when they can see with their own eyes how many illegals remain in their communities?
This man lied about a PHYSICAL WALL and his supporters believed him. This man lied about an ATTACK ON THE CAPITOL and his followers swallowed it. Things we have seen with our own eyes he has denied happening, and the MAGA universe has nodded with his pronouncements. Trump is the arbiter of what is true. So what need is there to actually DO the things he promised?
I know, it’s a strange defense. To say that he won’t need to be evil since he can just claim to be and that’s good enough is an odd comfort.
Trump can and will take credit for a recovering economy and a low crime rate which the country enjoys under Biden. He can claim to have fixed the immigration problem. And he can do so by doing precisely NOTHING. It will be a lie, but perhaps, in this case, the death of truth may be the only way our country lives.
Be seeing you!
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