Editor, Commonwealth:
I was watching the 7 p.m. news on MSNBC and caught Rudy Giuliani still rambling on about his bizarre and incoherent philosophical supposition that truth is not truth. If this is true and truth is not truth, then what is truth? We absolutely must determine what truth is. We cannot stumble through the remains of the 21th century with this existentially urgent question unanswered.
I think I know what may be gleaned from Giuliani and the other members of Donald Trump’s inner circle who have not quit or been fired. Truth and facts would to them be any smokescreen they could conjure up to cover over all of Trump’s BS, lies and other moral transgressions, of which there are many.
In order to pursue the questionable goal of protecting Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to the president, unearthed something called alternative facts, which, similar to truth which isn’t truth, are facts which aren’t facts. The foundations of truth which isn’t truth are these alternative facts which aren’t facts, which raises the question: If they aren’t facts, what then are they? In fact, they are lies.
Trump has maintained publicly that nothing, apparently including facts, matters. This novel approach to governance by his own admission has significantly reduced his own stress level. For example, he says, you can have an earthquake in India with thousands dead, but it means nothing to him. The fact of the catastrophic earthquake for him has no meaning. A human response from him isn’t necessary or possible, although a presidential one is both. Human life except his own means nothing to him. This, he has said, is the way he avoids stress.
He apparently has no interest in the daily activities of his job, which may be just as well and is probably for us a disguised blessing.
What remains of this brief discussion is to determine whether or not truth is truth and facts are facts. The simplest answer that we can hope for is that in the next administration, truth will be what it has always been and that facts will cease to be lies.
William Kirby
Greenwood
