What is ‘Truth”?
Pontius Pilate and “Professor” Harold Hill
What is truth?” retorted Pilate. John 18:38
I remember, not too long ago, reading this passage in the Bible and wondering just what Pilate was talking about. Truth seemed to be an easy call. Truth was objective. It was self-evident. Sure, there were nuances: sometimes it was night, sometimes it was day. When it was day on one part of the globe, it was night on another. But nobody ever, every confused “day” with “night”. “Up” and “down” may depend on your frame of reference, but once that was known, nobody would seriously confuse the two.
But things have changed…..
It hit me today as I was reading some substack posts and reflecting on other changes in “truth” reported :
· Steven Kirsch outlined the Sara Cody Deposition in a lawsuit brought by Santa Clara County against Calvary Chapel for failure to obey Cody, the Public Health Officer, and her demand for the use of masks. Cody claimed that a study from Bangladesh supported her demand when, in fact (this word “fact” will become more important as you read on) the study proved the benefit of masks was too insignificant to measure.
· In the Applied Complexity substack the authors quote Fauci regarding the new bivalent “boosters”: It hasn’t been proven in a clinical trial, because we don’t have time to do a clinical trial because we need to get the vaccine out now because we have such a situation throughout the world and certainly in the United States, we’re having 400 deaths per day and up to 5,000 hospitalizations a day.” Strange coming from the guy who demanded that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin be subjected to his version of a clinical trial before we used them. Many more people were dying then, but I guess, for some unknown reason, it only matters now.
· In another Steven Kirsch substack on Dr. Jha, Kirsch points out that Dr. Jha’s assertion that the jab decreased the risk of contracting COVID is false, even by the CDC’s own information.
· Biden tells us that the pandemic is over, but the emergency mandates remain in force.
· We are told we are not in a recession, even though the definition of a recession in fact has been met. We are told that inflation is getting better because the monthly jump in prices this month was less than the monthly jump in prices last month. Bit in fact inflation continues….
· We are now told that supporting women’s sports 30 years ago was noble, but now it is despicable, even though a Supreme Court Justice can’t define what a “woman” is. Others, more intellectually advanced, tell you it is whatever you think it is.
· Question fraud in the 2020 presidential election and you are an insurrectionist. Aver that Stacy Abrams is the rightful governor of Georgia and you are a patriot. And if you are that same Stacy Abrams, you can claim that sonograms of fetal heartbeats are manufactured by men in order to control women’s bodies and get no pushback at all. All that matters is what she thinks.
But none of this should come as a surprise. On the campaign trail, Biden famously stated “We believe truth over facts.:
So there you have it. Facts really don’t matter anymore. Your subjective belief in “truth” is all that matters. It doesn’t have to be factually true at all because “truth” is just a relative concept. You can have your truth and I can have my truth.
I’m reminded of Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man and his famous “Think Method” of learning music:
And just as the parents gushed their approval of the singularly awful music played by their kids, many continue to gush their approval of the public health professionals and politicians (they are actually indistinguishable at this point) who spew their version of “truth” and expect people to believe them. They have used, and continue to use, the “Think System” of truth.
Who knew when they watched that musical from back in the 1960’s that it was, in reality, a glimpse of the future? OUR future……
This is no longer a slippery slope. We are in free fall and have been for some time. I wonder what the landing will be like? We can’t change that with the “Think System”.