Reclaiming the Truth - Rob Horowitz

Reclaiming the Truth - Rob Horowitz

“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts,”  famously said Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  The former US Senator from New York, Ambassador to the UN and noted public intellectual well-understood that in order for a democracy to be healthy and function effectively, citizens and elected officials must be able to base arguments on reason and that can only occur if there is a dedication to the truth as a core value and an agreement on a commonly held set of facts.

Inheriting the wreckage created by the disastrous consequences of a president who staged a 4 year all-out assault on truth, making more than 30,000 false and misleading statements as documented by the Washington Post fact-checkers, President Biden made reclaiming the truth one of the central themes of his inaugural address.  “We must reject a culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.  My fellow Americans, we have to be different than this. America has to be better than this," our new president proclaimed.”   

Later in the speech, he underscored the importance of standing up for truth: “Recent weeks and months have taught us a painful lesson. There is truth and there are lies.  Lies told for power and for profit. And each of us has a duty and responsibility, as citizens, as Americans, and especially as leaders – leaders who have pledged to honor our Constitution and protect our nation — to defend the truth and to defeat the lies.

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The consequences of minimizing President Trump's persistent falsehoods and willful attempts to create an alternative ‘reality’ unmoored from reality itself, through excuses like “he should be taken seriously, not literally” or worse, amplifying his falsehoods as too many Republican elected officials and his media allies did, were driven home on January 6.  The result was a storming of the Capitol in an effort to disrupt the certification of electoral votes in which 5 people died and many more were injured by a group of people persuaded by President Trump and his enablers that the election was stolen and there was a realistic path to reverse the results. This was accomplished through a two month campaign of deliberate falsehood after deliberate falsehood. President Trump put the logs and kindling on the fire, And on a “day that will live in infamy” to borrow from FDR, he lit the match.

It was not an aberration, but completely in character that Mr. Trump ended his presidency with a futile, falsehood-ridden, and it turned out dangerous attempt to overturn the will of the people and finagle a way to cling to power—a disgraceful act that even Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post called ‘cheering for an undemocratic coup."  It was, unfortunately, a fitting conclusion to his fierce effort beginning on day one of his presidency with lies about the size of his inaugural crowd to flood the American public with a steady and unrelenting campaign of disinformation—a campaign that all too often convinced his supporters to believe outright lies or at least doubt the plain truth.

 Hannah Arendt, in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” highlighted the threats to democracy created when leaders like Trump govern through replacing truth with propaganda:  "The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

President Trump and his enablers did their very best to overturn John Adams famous observation that “facts are stubborn things.” They fell short and the truth won out. It was too close a call, however.   The lesson we must learn is eternal vigilance is required.

Fortunately, President Joe Biden recognizes this challenge.  And more importantly, he knows that the truth is not just inherently of fundamental importance; it is the foundation of self-governance.

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.