Lies, Facts and more Lies. And Maybe some truth.
What was it Churchill said, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts? Guess that’s not true any more.
I’m not sure if I was amused or terrified (maybe both) by Trump spokesperson Scottie Nell Hughes’ statement recently:
“Well, I think it’s also an idea of an opinion. And that’s—on one hand, I hear half the media saying that these are lies. But on the other half, there are many people that go, ‘No, it’s true.’ And so one thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch, is that people that say facts are facts—they’re not really facts. Everybody has a way—it’s kind of like looking at ratings, or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth, or not truth. There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts.”
OK, well, all that proves is that Ms. Hughes doesn’t know the difference between a fact and opinion. But it does have remind me of when Humpty Dumpty“ notes when he uses a word “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” Uh huh.
Still, to the main point then,
Anyway Alex Ross’ piece “The Frankfurt School knew Trump was coming,” has a nice quotation.
Lies have long legs: they are ahead of their time. The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power, a process that truth itself cannot escape if it is not to be annihilated by power, not only suppresses truth as in earlier despotic orders, but has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false, which the hirelings of logic were in any case diligently working to abolish. So Hitler, of whom no one can say whether he died or escaped, survives. (Adorno)
The whole article is found on the New Yorker’s web site and it makes me want to seek out the new book on the Frankfurt School by Stuart Jeffries Grand Hotel Abyss now half-price at Verso’s site.
Notes from Underground 
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