Political Truth

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While not a well-recognized term, "political truth" may well develop into a term over the next few years. The question has become, from a morality standpoint, when the omission of material terms, the use of inaccurate "facts" and the many other challenges honest disclosure has faced over the past century are acceptable and can be treated as the truth, or if they are not sufficient to be recognized as truthful. In part, this will also depend on whether the standard is subjective or objective. Is it important to know if the person making the statement knew it was false, or that there is sufficient reason to believe that most (almost all?) people would have known that the statement was false, or improperly misleading.

During the Twentieth Century, popaganda was elevated to an artform. At this time, press and other machinery was developed intentionally to mislead in order to secure an objective, often one designed to foster national goals. While there is evidence of the use of propaganda before this time, most would concede that the press was not sufficiently developed and its works distributed to be effective until the mid- to late-1800s. However, by the end of the Twentiety Century the television had moved propaganda to such a broad spectrum of the population that the ability to check on truth, and to ensure accuracy, was becoming more likely merely due to the extension of the statements to those who would have knowledge of their accuracy. The Internet has only further limited the effectiveness of inaccurate propaganda.

Hence, sometime around the Reagan Era, political truth was hatched. The trick was to create enough apparent support for a statement that it appears to be true, even if it was knowingly false. This approach depended on two prongs. First, the statements had to be political, meaning (in part due to the categorization of news into politics and other news including crimes, etc.) that they had to have political impact even if they were also critical to other issues, including criminal activities. As long as they were "political," the truth could be stretched, avoided as a moral right, or otherwise changed to accommodate the position of the person asserting the claim. This was aided by changes in what ordinary terms mean, such as the change from oral sex being "sex" to being something that was not sex (ala President Clinton's approach) to murder depending on how old a fetus was at the time of its termination to a number of other changes in terminology.

The artform of political truth has reached its present day zenith, some would argue, through President Bush's use of Karl Rove. Indeed, President Bush himself has stated that the acts challenged in the case against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were just political because they are so classified in on-line news reporting websites like www.washingtonpost.com and www.foxnews.com. And few but the most ardent supporters can believe at this point that there was not manipulation of fact and sources in order to expouse many actions taken by the Bush Administration, including the entire "War on Terror" and its new uses of the term "war" in this context, moving the true meaning of war to an entirely different meaning.

Political truth has become far more dangerous in its present form. It is a far more subtle and dangerous change from what used to be propaganda because it avoids truth and embraces deception in the name of some higher good. Unlike propaganda, however, it fails to announce itself as politics, choosing instead to present itself as "fact" when they are at best misstated and misconstrued and at worse outright lies. As soon as we are prepared to get into those fine lines, the center of our morality begins to teeter without a compass to guide it. And this is all the more exacerbated by refusing to make actions or facts public. The less public, the more likely outright lies will triumph.