When lies pass for the truth, something in democracy disappears. Since conservatives insist liberals are lying and liberals insist conservatives are lying, somebody in the house of democracy is not telling the truth.
The standard theme of anti-Trumpers long has been the assertion that Donald Trump is a congenital serial liar. Both The New York Times and the Washington Post have printed full-page stories listing hundreds of Trump’s lies.
Trump’s narrative offers a different perspective. After his felony conviction in Manhattan, he spoke to the media: “I’m a very innocent man. And it’s OK. I am fighting for our country, I am fighting for our Constitution. Our whole country is being rigged right now. This was done by the Biden administration, in order to wound or hurt an opponent, a political opponent, and I think it is just a disgrace, and we will keep fighting, we will fight to the end and we will win.”
Rodney Kennedy
A standard trope in American politics is, “All politicians lie.” The assumption fails to consider a much older contract between Americans and our politicians: We always have presumed a basic standard of truth-telling on the part of politicians. Our nation’s laws and customs assume people are acting in good faith. Politicians, until the age of Trump, were expected to express remorse and shame when caught lying. Now, there is an aura of shamelessness in our politics. The truth is sacrificed for the desire for unmitigated power.
Our national contract of expecting a base level of truth-telling from our politicians has been shattered. Millions of Americans have made it clear they don’t care about politicians lying and being caught lying. By reelecting Trump as president, these Americans declared they are not put off by his lying. They like it because being able to get away with lying has become a sign of strength.
There now exists a kind of active despising of truth in America — the previously accepted habit of truth-seeking and truth-telling.
Truth never has been as contestable in our history as now. Opinions flourish over rational reasons. Scholars in every discipline are routinely dismissed and denigrated by people with no expertise. Science and history face unprecedented attacks from a populist movement screaming, “Who are you to interfere with my freedom to deny global warming?”
Truth is on trial in America.
Will we become a nation of alternative facts, conspiracy theories, truth-benders, masters of hyperbole, American exceptionalism, fabricators of falsehood, outright liars? Have we become the people of the lie?
“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
Flannery O’Connor’s words jar our spirits: “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
Long before the book of Proverbs became part of the Old Testament, the material was a political training manual. The book of Proverbs originally was a textbook for young men training for service in the government, the administration of Solomon. The book trains public servants in insight, understanding, wisdom and truth.
The wise woman of Proverbs 8, the personification of wisdom, calls out to all who seek truth. “All my sayings are honest, and nothing in them is tortuous or twisted.” She has been imparting truth to all willing recipients since the first cell divided and originated the billions of years that led to the creation.
Wisdom, God’s persuader, was there through it all, calling out to all entities. She called out to the perfect form within the chaos that would become the cosmos — calling all to the light, to the truth.
Today, ours is a flattened universe of pragmatism, raw power and violence. The escapes are emotional outbursts of fear and anger, boredom and distraction. Don’t bother us with truth; our minds already are made up. We accept the lie and baptize it as our truth.
A secular world has no patience with the truth claims of Christianity. Even Christians have fallen under the spell of secularism. We are all secular now, and belief has accommodated to the secular.
As Richard Lischner puts it in The End of Words, “When the message of Jesus Christ can be Nazified or made the tool of racism, antisemitism, apartheid or capitalism, it is time for preachers to shut up and take stock of themselves.”
This has made possible the emergence of an “exclusive humanism” — a new option in the marketplace of beliefs, a vision of life in which only the immanent matters. Taylor says, “I mean by this a humanism accepting no final goals beyond human flourishing, nor any allegiance to anything else beyond this flourishing. Of no previous society was this true.”
And then there’s the even more pernicious problem of post truth. Oxford Dictionaries defines it as “relating to and denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Objective truth bows to opinions.
“Post-truth has become the basic dogma of our society.”
Post-truth has become the basic dogma of our society. In a post truth culture, people feel they have a kind of fantasy power over reality itself. For example, climate denial gives the denier freedom from truth. If you don’t like the truth, simply reject it and claim the opposite. This is what Americans now call freedom.
It seems Baptists and Catholics are now more determined to prove they are good Americans rather than good Christians. If the pope or an Episcopal bishop criticizes President Trump, an array of evangelical Baptists and Pentecostals will attack these Christian leaders because being a good American “trumps” being a good Christian.
The demand for individual freedom dominates what was once a desire to know the truth and have the truth make us free. The modern American mantra: “You shall be free to determine the truth.”
Have we reached the end of truth? When true convictions give way to bigger and bigger lies told and repeated by more and more people with spectacular passion, it is hard to tell what is true.
By rejecting truth, we have allowed our politics to outrun our principles. We have allowed our need for power to outrun our need for truth. Is this the end of truth?
As long as one person insists on truth-seeking and truth-speaking, there is hope. Even if the darkness covers the light from coast to coast, there will be tiny sparks of light here and there and the darkness shall not overcome the light.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.