You Can't Handle the Truth

Remember when Jack Nicholson played the part of the Colonel Jessep, as Tom Cruise cross examines him, in the movie "A Few Good Men" and Tom gets Jack heated to a point where the Colonel loses his temper screaming “You can’t handle the truth!” Tom was grilling him over a soldiers apparent accidental death asking the Colonel for the truth stating that we as a society deserve at least that.

The Declaration of Independence says “...we hold these truths to be self evident. That all men are created equal.” The thought behind this statement shows that these thinkers and policy makers of their time thought that there was a truth. (note: we know that the same men writing these words at the time owned slaves, but I use this to make a point) That there was an undeniable meaning behind thoughts and statements that would be either based on facts or based on inherent or undeniable universal laws. As there is truth, there is also, now, truth by proxy. Today, our society has become a people that hold truth to be a collective idea. It has become something that is becoming lesser and lesser of real value. Truth itself has become a commodity to be packaged and sold.

Can we find real truth today?

Former President Trump spouts off that the media is all lies and only he tells the truth. Putin is cutting off any other news source to his people and only delivering his own set of facts while claiming that the other news outlets are telling lies and fabrication as to his current military actions in the Ukraine. It seems that we as a species hold truth as a collective. We have become a society that is set more on feeling good about our world than actually knowing about our world. The science behind evolution is being diluted with the right wing propaganda of creationism or intelligent design. However, science is based on fact and creationism and intelligent design are based on belief. These are two very different means of conclusion.

Ayn Rand, author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, believed that truth exists independently of the minds and opinions of people. That there was an underlying universal self evident truth that existed beyond the scope of society and its collective manipulations that can cloud the value of universal truth.

However, it seems that truth can be manipulated by proclamation. Through continuous self serving statements the use of collective intelligence can make a non reality the opposite. As we watch this current political process unfold we must stay aware of the proclamations and the manipulations of truth since, as a collective populace, we rarely take the time to educate ourselves to statements that are thrown into the public consciousness.

There is a reality beyond our will and we must respect it if we want to succeed.

As we have seen in the past, and it has become much more pronounced with this most recent previous administration that the truth can be manipulated and self serving. And look at the results...

When our elected representatives allowed the previous administration and its proud boys and girls to attack our nations capital the checks and balances of our democracy became torn. The Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas ruled in his own personal favor on issues dealing with the January 6 attack because his wife was directly involved in the attack and was a part of the days events. The Dept. of Justice hesitates to honor all of the evidence exposing the plot to overthrow our nations election process and to take over the country to become an authoritarian state puts any semblance of truth and justice away claiming that things might be construed as political in nature rather than self serving to the truth and the rule of law.

This along with a majority judicial branch that stands behind the original Constitution without the addition of amendments shows the danger we have allowed ourselves to become. Our justice department has yet to arrest those players who have simply ignored Senate inquiry subpoenas. I guess it pays to be a rich white guy. If any regular person ignored a subpoena they would be arrested immediately. There have been little high level players yet to be charged with any wrong doing for the near overthrow of the greatest democracy ever created on the planet. Despite the investigation and the facts uncovered, the Republicans are not listening to the facts (as they claim that nearly all of the facts were heresay, manipulated, and falsified) and do not take the time to allow for the truth to come out and be verified. The Republicans claim they will simply dissolve the January 6 investigation if their party takes over control of the Congress in the upcoming midterms. This is all extremely dangerous ground. Where is truth? Where is justice? Where is what used to be construed as self evident?

Through the collective emotion and the former administration’s manipulated truth by proclamation the former President Trump team and his faithful followers have subsequently taken our country into a real option of authoritarianism and ending democracy as we know it. Immediately after January 6, 2021 the media statements at that time were of a war on democracy. Over a short time frame there was an invasion of the democratic Ukraine by authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin and the Russian military. Trump continues to praise Putin while continuing to falsely claim that the Presidential election was stolen from him. The collective intelligence is being blinded by the collective emotions of the society. As the truth can be manipulated to the extent that the outcomes can dictate our will depends directly on the extent that our understanding dictates reality. There is a saying that history is written by the victors. What will our future history look like when we relabel the actual truth of history to become a catch phrase called critical race theory?

In a democracy it is the people that have to keep the elected officials and political operatives honest and on point. This is where America is slipping. We are losing our grip as the politicians have learned and become quite astute at giving us only the information that will make us feel good rather than the truth of situations. As a society, it seems, we cannot come to face the realities that exist around us which is why most people get their current event news from late night comedian shows. They would rather feel good as they get a little information. There is a saying that “information is power”. It seems that our current state of society seems to choose to be powerless. Perhaps this is why during the past Presidents and the process of campaigning we have not heard much dialogue on policy or global issues, but more character issues seem to be dominate. Republicans have not had an actual platform of ideas, other than, say no to whatever Democratic proposal comes forward. The media continues their frosting of the two headed snake with light discussions on talking points to make sure that the public knew what they were supposed to be concerned about...

We have become a society that holds truth to be collective intelligence and self serving rather than something that is actually self evident or shown through evidentiary facts. We are a Wikipedia society. It seems ironic how Wikipedia has become such an ingrained and integral part of our international society and Internet experience for finding and distributing information. This information being as a collective. The old school of thought that truth and reality were fixed and objectively knowable is going away. Through libertarian thinkers like, Friedrich von Hayek, who says that decentralized markets work best because they are so much more efficient than centralized bureaucracies at digesting information.(2) Although, given the deregulation of the financial, telecommunications and energy industries, as an example, there may be room to disagree. Although, we are now not discussing capitalism or markets we are discussing knowledge and truth.

We are a society that is concerned much more with success rather than truth. Due to this we have become a society that is much more concerned with feeling good rather than dealing with the unpleasantness of our society. We see examples of this with the nature of our economic situation to date. We are not looking at the root causes of the ills of our society rather we are looking for band-aids or bailouts.

While I was writing my acclaimed book, “Quantum of Justice” I had an interesting conversation with a banker of a global banking institution regarding the Bear Stearn bailout. Perhaps, he pined, if we unveiled the truths behind this transaction we might find more evidence of a truth we would rather not know and believe. Upon some recent meetings to which he had attended he found some interesting clues to market manipulation and conspiracy. It seems that the global money laundering empire of the elite global families like the Rothchild's, Rockefeller's, Bush’s, Clinton’s, Trump’s, and more was about to become exposed if this financial institution were to go bankrupt. As the court documents of this failed institution would have allowed the bank's books to become public knowledge the American power mongers manipulated the system for JP Morgan to come to the rescue using government backed guarantees. Upon this the public is non the wiser and the propaganda machine gives a manipulated truth to become a collective truth.

The truth will set us free. We live in an open cage where truth is now manufactured just as easy as our perceived freedoms.