Summary: Yesterday was a big day for those that value the truth in America. Like a first sprig of green in Spring, let’s cherish it and hope it grows. That’s the path to political reform in America. Perhaps the only one.
“In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth Is a revolutionary act.”
— A powerful truth. Origin unknown. Attributed to George Orwell. (Details here.)
Journalists work hard and skillfully to cloud our vision, substituting their preferred narratives for truth. My favorite example is President Kennedy, portrayed as an athlete and family man. He was, of course, the opposite. A decade later, we were told that President Ford was clumsy. In fact, Ford was a natural athlete, active and in good condition for his age (61 as President). Skipping ahead two decades, Dan Quayle’s 1992 “Murphy Brown” speech – warning about the rising numbers of unwed mothers – was condemned by the great and wise, with few journalists disturbing us with the facts (details here and here). Twenty years later even the egg-heads at Brookings admitted he was right.
The Trump years have shown their mastery of information control, despite the “information superhighway.” Trump is a rogue President, elected despite the opposition of the leaders of both major parties. He blurts out unmentionable truths, like the court jesters of medieval Europe. This makes him an immense danger to our rulers and a potentially revolutionary force. So they tell us that everything he says is wrong. Today he proved them wrong, again.
In 2015 Trump said the simple truth about Syria
“Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
— Orwell in “Politics and the English Language” (1946). Available at Amazon.
See this interview of Trump by Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press”, 4 October 2015. Note Todd’s child-like understanding of diplomacy and realpolitik. He pretends not to know that neither requires that a nation’s leaders “trust” those they negotiate with.
Trump: We are going to get bogged down in Syria … I was taking to a general two days ago, and he said, we have no idea who these people are. We are training people we don’t who they are, we are giving them billions of dollars to fight Assad. And you know what, it’s very possible And I am not saying Assad is a good guy, he is probably a bad guy, but I watched him interviewed many times, and you can make a case …If you look at Libya, look what we did there – it’s a mess, if you look at Saddam Hussein with Iraq, look what we did there – it’s a mess! It’s going to be the same thing! …
Todd: So you welcome Putin’s involvement?
Trump: I like that Putin is bombing the hell out of ISIS. And it’s going to be ISIS. And I tell you why, Putin HAS to get rid of ISIS, because Putin doesn’t want ISIS coming into his country!
Todd: Why do you trust him, when nobody else does?
Trump: I don’t trust him at all, other that we both got good ratings the other night on 60 minutes, it was me and Putin, can you believe it? So did I get the ratings or did he? But the truth is, it’s not even a question of trust… We’ve spent now 2 trillion in Iraq, probably a trillion in Afghanistan. We are destroying our country! We owe 19 trillion dollars. We are bogged down. Russia was bogged down in Afghanistan, meaning the Soviet Union, and it broke up the Soviet Union! …
Todd: You would pull out of what we are doing in Syria now?
Trump: …Here is the problem: we are fighting Assad, and we are fighting for people and helping people that we don’t even know who they are, and they may be worse than Assad, they may be worse, ok? They may be worse!
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Trump again defies the Deep State by stating simple truths and suggesting wise policies
Flash forward 2.5 years. Despite his skeptical words during the election, Trump continued to pour money into Syria. With no visible effect, as described in Monday’s post. Meanwhile, Syria has crushed the insurgents – including ISIS – with Russia’s support. Now he again expresses skepticism about one front in our Long Mad Wars. Soon will see if these words mean more than those in 2015.
Press conference by Donald Trump at the White House on 6 April 2018.
Steve Holland of Reuters: Mr. President, some of your military advisors are urging you to keep a contingent of US troops in Syria to ensure the defeat of ISIS. What is your current thinking on the subject? Do you still want them out? Secondly, could you clarify what you meant about having US military guard the US border along with Mexico?
Trump’s reply. It is just common sense. It is important to our rulers that you do not see this.
“First of all, the border. The Mexican border is very unprotected by our laws. We have horrible and very unsafe laws in the United States. We’re going to be able to do something about that hopefully soon. Hopefully Congress will get their act together and get in and create some very powerful laws, like Mexico has, like Canada has, and like almost all countries have. If we don’t have laws, we have to catch and release – and people {should} come back years later for a court case. Except they virtually never come back. We are preparing for the military to secure our border between Mexico and the United States.
“We have a meeting on it in a little while with General Mattis and everybody. I think that it’s something we have to do now. The caravan, which is over a thousand people coming in from Honduras, thought they were going to just walk right through Mexico and right through the border. …
“I told Mexico yesterday that because their laws are so strong they can do things about it that are hard to believe the United States can’t. I said I hope you’re going to tell that Caravan not to get up to the border. I think they’re doing that because as of 12 minutes ago it was all being broken up. …
“We have to have strong borders. We need the wall. We’ve started building the wall. As you know, we have $1.6 billion toward building the wall and fixing existing wall that’s falling down or was never appropriate in the first place. …
“As far as our primary mission in terms of ISIS, we’ve almost completed that task. We’ll be making a decision very quickly in coordination with others in the area as to what we’ll do. …I want to bring our troops back home.
“I want to start rebuilding our nation. We will have, as of three months ago, $7 trillion dollars {spent} in the Middle East over the last 17 years. We got nothing – nothing – out of it. …Think of it: seven trillion dollars over a 17 year period. We have nothing except death and destruction. …Sometimes it’s time to come back home. We’re thinking about that very seriously.”
The power of the truth
We are increasingly fragmented into tribes. As our politics becomes more confused, the dividing lines become less ideological (unrelated to policy preferences) – more a matter of identity (what mask we prefer to wear the costume ball of faux activism). A recent study provides evidence of this, although it is evident in the daily news. In this situation, the simple truth becomes destabilizing. We live in an era of lies when a child’s statement that the Emperor wears no clothes might unleash chaos.
We can reform America. The first step is for each of us to prefer truth to tribal lies. It is out there, if you look for it.