The “Alternative Facts” of Donald Trump vs. the Truth

January 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

This week, Donald Trump went after the truth. He lied about Mexico and Mexicans. He lied about refugees. He lied about Black people. He lied about things extremely crucial and things unbelievably petty.

But this blizzard of lies had a purpose. This whole method of relentlessly piling on lie after lie is calculated to both raise or reinforce doubts among many as to whether reality is even knowable, and at the same time to inculcate in his core followers the conviction that the phony, upside-down version of the world that Trump creates (and that confirms their ugliest, most backward sentiments and resentments) is actually real and worth fighting and dying for. Many of Trump’s core followers have been trained by years of FOX News. Others not only drink at the poisoned well of FOX but are members of fanatical right-wing Christian fascist congregations and/or watch the Christian Broadcasting Network (which was among the first two new organizations recognized at the first White House press conference) where outlandish and bizarre beliefs, e.g., that “demons” control major American cities, that “god” called down Hurricane Katrina or 9/11 to punish America for gay rights, etc.—are solemnly put forward and believed.

The very pace at which Trump churns out these lies means that before people have even refuted the first one, he’s asserted three more and as president, it’s his assertions and not the refutations that get heard and that stick.

But—there IS such a thing as objective reality; there is a “real world out there” that can be measured, probed, tested, analyzed, and understood. There are ideas about the world and why it is the way it is that can be tested, and which can be determined to be true. There is a process of observation, study, testing of ideas, summing up evidence and discovering the patterns within that and why they happen that contributes to real knowledge. There is a way to find out what is true and what is false—the scientific method. Without such a method to get at and find out the truth—there is no way forward; with such a method, and the truths it reveals about reality and the possible pathways through which it might be changed, humanity’s horizons open up. On that basis, to paraphrase the old slogan, a better world really IS possible.

There are many crucial and critical battles to wage against the monstrous fascist Trump-Pence regime, and the battle for the truth runs through them all. As part of waging this battle… as part of understanding reality… we are both taking on and shredding three of Trump's biggest and most dangerous lies… and calling your attention to works by BA, both longer pieces and shorter quotes, on the struggle for and method of getting at the truth and why it matters, as well as SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION, an interview with Ardea Skybreak, a critical work on BA’s new synthesis of communism which gets very deeply into the scientific method for knowing and changing… the world.

 

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