Truth or Consequences

May 9, 2017, feels like eons ago in our political and social history—not to mention that my two college-student children weren’t even in high school yet. But my mind goes back to that date every so often because that was when we were first introduced to the reality that a crazy, petty, unbalanced sociopath had become the leader of the free world. That was the day Trump fired James Comey as director of the FBI, doing so with what we now recognize as a typical Trumpian cocktail of viciousness, mendacity, and pettiness. (Remember what a big deal he made about Comey not being able to fly back from the West Coast on an FBI plane?)

At the time, however, it stunned people both in and out of government—to the extent that there was discussion within the Department of Justice about invoking the 25th Amendment, on the grounds that we had a president who was unfit to serve. There was even talk of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein potentially wearing a wire to the White House to record more of Trump’s insane ramblings.

In hindsight, that moment now feels like something out of a quaint, bygone era. For many years now, far greater displays of pettiness and mendacity on Trump’s part have simply passed by as part of the landscape. We have come to absorb Trump’s astonishing pathologies as baked in. The American people, too, seem largely untroubled by the regular displays of insanity emanating from the country’s highest office. And it’s hard enough to register and react to his endless power grabs without stepping back to consider the broader corrosive impact of Trump’s odious conduct.

But we should. And when we do, we should start with the assault on truth—almost certainly the most sustained and shameless in the history of the presidency. Followers of this Substack know that my habit when analyzing Trumpian outrages is to begin with the lies that seem invariably at the core of his maneuvers.

It’s happened again in each of his main moves over just the last couple of days. The executive order on voting: anchored in the lie that there is widespread fraud in our elections, especially by noncitizens voting. The latest law firm blackballing of Jenner & Block: anchored in the lie that the firm threatens national security when, in reality, all it did was hire Andrew Weissmann after he left the Mueller investigation. The defense of Pete Hegseth and others for the colossal screw-up in leaking information on a military operation: anchored in the repeated assertion that there was no classified information—which is either a bald-faced lie or rests on a tortured legalism that hasn’t been revealed to the country.

Dulled by familiarity with the steady stream of lies, we have come to take them as a given—a sort of freestanding quality of Trump, a fact of life under his rule.

Every time I encounter an intelligent supporter of Trump—they do exist; some are friends of mine; and I’m always interested to speak with them—I ask, if the opportunity arises: What about all the friggin’ lies? How can it not concern you that everything he does is anchored in a lie? And the answer they give is, first, to acknowledge that it’s true—he is a serial liar—but second, that they nevertheless like his tax policies, or his judicial appointments, or they can’t bring themselves to vote for a Democrat. The underlying assumption, it seems to me, is that his lies can be contained—an isolated fault akin to chewing with his mouth open. You wish he wouldn’t do it, but it doesn’t affect the rest of his governance.

But in fact, it does, and we have to insist on it. There is a reason we venerate George Washington’s honesty or that Abraham Lincoln was known as “Honest Abe.” Truthfulness in our political leaders is a virtue, but it is far more than that—it is intimately tied to our flourishing as a society. And its radical devaluing under Trump cannot be separated from the many frightening and immoral aspects of his rule.

To explain this critical point at length—and better than I could—I end this entry by sharing an excellent essay by Adina Roskies, a professor of philosophy at U.C. Santa Barbara (who also just so happens to be my sister-in-law). Roskies’s clear-eyed, tightly argued essay explains, as she puts it, that “[t]ruth lies at the foundation of what has made America great, and every assault on truth eats away at that foundation.” I hope you will reflect on it and enjoy it as much as I did.

Talk to you later.

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Devaluing Truth Makes America Weak

by Adina Roskies

Truth matters. You wouldn’t know that from watching the president address Congress earlier this month. The assault on truth since January has been breathtaking. The removal of data from government websites, the elevation of science deniers to positions in charge of scientific policy, and the advancement of health policy that flies in the face of scientific evidence are only the tip of the iceberg. We are watching a disaster in the making: Our leaders are all falling in line with a program that prioritizes politics and power over American success. But, we ignore the truth at our own peril—reality has a way of getting our attention even if we look the other way.

As a philosophy professor, my discipline’s attention to truth has never seemed more relevant than today. Although, there may be disagreement about the ultimate nature of truth, even the most minimal theory agrees that truth requires alignment with the way the world is. It is neither negotiable nor unimportant. Devaluing the importance of truth is a fool’s game, and it is incompatible with American success. It makes us weak and vulnerable; epidemics, deaths, and unrest will follow.

What has made us so successful? Some point to our democratic system of government and the freedom that it has sustained. Some will pick out the scientific and technological advances that form the backbone of our economy, advances that have ranged from cures for diseases to the development of the automobile, the internet, and artificial intelligence. Also important is the elevation of the individual, and the individual rights enshrined in our constitution. And then there is our educational system, the envy of the world, at least until now. At the root of all that is best about America is a core value—truth.

A functioning system of democracy requires trust: If those in power do not speak the truth there is no basis for trust, and if there is no basis for trust, we abdicate the ground for our freedom. People must trust that their votes will count, that their officials will perform their duties in the service of their nation and not for personal gain, and that the system of checks and balances will not be subverted. Indeed, our freedom is shored up by free speech laws that ensure transparency. As the visual metaphor suggests, transparency allows us to see the truth. The same can be said for a capitalist economy: once trust is lost in the system, once graft becomes rampant, and once the currency cannot be trusted to hold its value, the system collapses.

Science is the search for the truth about the natural world, and its success is predicated on following the facts where they lead. Not all truths are convenient, and some are downright frightening, but scientific facts cannot be massaged or legislated for our own purposes. It is only by recognizing the facts for what they are that we can make intelligent decisions about how to move forward, that we can build buildings that do not crumble, and medicines that work. Lying about the facts or erasing knowledge undermines science and our success.

The foundations of morality, whether religious or secular, also posit truth as a central value. The Ten Commandments clearly enjoin truth-telling: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

Rewriting history to mark Ukraine as the aggressor in the war that Russia instigated should be called out for what it is: a blatant example of bearing false witness, and on this view, a sin against God. But even those whose moral foundations are secular, recognize the centrality of truth to morality. For example, the development of moral character, the bedrock of Virtue Ethics, requires the consistent and deliberate exercise of truthful behavior until truth-telling becomes part of one’s moral fiber.

As Americans, we teach our children not to lie and tell them the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. Although apocryphal, the story illustrates the strong link between strength of character, commitment to truth, and American patriotism.

That’s ridiculous! You might say—isn’t truth a cudgel that the powerful wield to cement their interests?

This thinking might be where our present leaders go wrong, but to do so is to misunderstand the nature of truth, which depends on the way the world is, not what someone wants or asserts it to be. Truth is not opinion, nor is it mysterious or elusive. At its base is the simple notion of correspondence to the facts, and those facts can be empirically established and will exert their influence despite our wishes.

To be sure, sometimes the facts are complicated, and discerning them requires the expertise developed with training, which is why our educational system is fundamental to our success, and why scientific hypotheses are discussed in terms of degrees of certainty. But we should all be very clear: To assert falsehoods is to undermine all we stand for. To try to blur the lines between truth and lying is a common move in a fascist playbook. These exercises of power may often seem inconsequential, but make no mistake: they are aimed at destroying our values and ultimately our democracy.

Truth lies at the foundation of what has made America great, and every assault on truth eats away at that foundation. It is incumbent on all of us to stand up and decry every lie, to call out every act of censorship, to demand transparency, and to demand integrity from those who represent us. Once you give up on truth, you have given up on democracy.

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Adina L. Roskies is a Public Voices fellow of The OpEd Project and the University of California Santa Barbara, where she is a Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Cognitive Science graduate emphasis.

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This article was first published by the Fulcrum.