Use Your Platform for Good

Always be in pursuit of the truth

At some point during Trump’s first term I took to social media and tapped out a simple status update listing the most outrageous orders, actions, and lies he had carried out or spoken. I don’t remember at what point during the presidency I wrote the post, but there’s been no shortage of material.

I remember composing the post because I was careful to check every claim I made in my bulleted list. I began each statement with two slashes “//” to serve as the bullet and a line break between each item. I wanted to present a matter of fact list of these actions, thinking that if presented with an enumeration of the evidence, Trump’s spell over at least some people would surely break. I don’t know how many bulleted items were on my list, but it was thorough. I would consider a few if not several of the items to be dealbreakers on their own.

Adam, I’m disappointed, you should be using your platform for good.

Wrote one commenter. I was struck. I did little more than make a list of reported facts and held them up to the light. This is not a misuse of my platform; it’s a misuse of the office.

That comment was so odd to me and untethered from reality that I’ve never been able to shake it. I’m simply listing things the man said or did. Each able to be checked against a source. Yes, it amounts to a compelling case for his unfitness, but his actions cannot amount to a misuse of my platform, unless the use of my platform
for good is simply to be quiet. And I suppose that is the intended suggestion.

Mindful that I was selecting and composing the list that was biased in the direction of indicting the man for his terrible behavior, I understood his suggestion that I knew what I was doing, and I did, but it was, after all, his behavior that I was reporting. We do not suggest the prosecutor is “being mean” when presenting the facts of the case.

This memorable comment did introduce two ideas: First, that a presentation of facts is threatening, and second, there was nothing on a rap sheet of terrible behavior that would sway a supporter, or at least would not sway this supporter. But something deeper must be going on. Why is it that Trump has such a hold on people that they are willing to forgive so much?

Another commenter observed, several years later but also involving Trump,

For a decent person, it is easy to spot indecency. But not everyone is decent.

I Iiked that wisdom, and I think it has its place, but I happen to know very decent people who, nevertheless, are Trump supporters. How is it that a man with civil and criminal liability and a record of unfaithfulness, fraud, and misogyny has the support of these people, who I know to be decent?

***

I think it’s important to tell the truth. And maybe there are exceptions. One time my spouse asked me how a particular article of clothing looked and really doubled down on me being honest in my appraisal.

I’m not sure that is the best option.

I carefully replied.

Why?

This is the meme from Star Wars: It’s a trap!

We don’t have to say why.

Generally, it is important to tell the truth. But not only is telling the truth hard (“We don’t have to say why.”), discerning the truth is equally a monumental task, especially so in our 24/7 oversaturated media environment. And it’s not the first time we’re facing this. It’s been the Trump team’s strategy to, as Steve Bannon put it, “flood the zone with shit”:

The issue for many people isn’t exactly a denial of truth as such. It’s more a growing weariness over the process of finding the truth at all. And that weariness leads more and more people to abandon the idea that the truth is knowable.

I call this “manufactured” because it’s the consequence of a deliberate strategy. It was distilled almost perfectly by Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News and chief strategist for Donald Trump. “The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon reportedly said in 2018. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

Not only is it difficult to hold yourself personally accountable to truth telling, our media enviroment means that we must also hold ourselves personally accountable to discerning the truth within the sea of information we consume. Trump has learned that the more distractions you create, the more difficult people will find it to wade through, and with boots soggy with mud, after a while, people just give up on the task.

Absent of truth or absent the notion that truth is knowable at all, truth becomes a constructed reality of media and confirmation bias. Add to that a message that the country is in decline and give people a scapegoat that creates an us vs. them tribalism, and people are ready to follow the leader.

The culture of authoritarianism is uncertainty and fear among the people and the sure promise from the leader that “I alone can fix it.” This is an old playbook. The way to overcome uncertainty and fear is to discern the truth. The unknown is frightening, ripe for conspiracy theories and half-truths, but information is empowering and knowledge an antidote to fear. We hold this wisdom in an old idiom: “I want to know what I’m up against.”

But truth demands a commitment to discerning it and an admission that you don’t (yet) have the information. Here I think we confront the culture of, what did Zuck call it? “Masculine energy.” The man is to be in charge, and admitting vulnerability sounds more like a beta than an alpha, so the epistemic uncertainty that we all feel becomes an assault on masculinity. I have no doubt that attacks on transgender people also stem from this masculine insecurity.

I’m no cultural anthropologist, psychologist, or trained in gender studies. I’m only thinking through these ideas in front of you. But I do think the instability of a rapidly evolving global landscape, the increasing representation of women, trans, and other genderqueer people, the abuse by the corporate class that robbed workers of livelihoods and destroyed whole cities when the plants moved overseas or to Mexico, the distress of caring for aging parents while trying to run a household and put food on your table, and the collective grief of a pandemic that we’ve never actually mourned challenges all of us, and I think especially so for those whose identities are rooted in being the one who people look to for direction and a steady hand. That is the culture of conservative expressions of theology that encourage a subservient wife and a strong male head of household.

Those are worldviews rooted in an absolutism that cannot be challenged. The new way forward is to define a worldview of truth, not certainty.

The truth is responsive to evidence. We can always be in pursuit of the truth, and no matter how complicated or overwhelming or inconvenient that truth may be, it is worth pursuing because the culture of authoritarianism is uncertainty and fear, and the antidote to uncertainty is information. Seeing that the truth is responsive to new evidence, we can never say that we have the final truth, but neither can we say that the truth is unknowable. We can collect evidence to see how it matches the truth we think we have, with a commitment to overturning the falsehoods we’ve weeded out.

Fostering a worldview of truth, not certainty, encourages us to be curious about the world. It will require more work, that’s for sure, but it will go some way toward addressing uncertainty by denying that certainty itself is attainable. With enough evidence and a commitment to always staying alert for more, we can gain confidence that we’ve pursued the truth and approached something near it.

To lose ourselves in the overwhelming shit of information breeds a nihilism that throws up its hands and says, “You figure this out for me.” The trouble is, some folks will take you up on that offer, and we treat those people who spoon-fed us the answer as the ultimate harbingers of truth, especially when that truth reinforces your identity and worldview or hands you an adversary to be against. They become your source for information. When that information is challenged, it’s your worldview that is challenged, too. What would it be for the world not to be the way that you’ve understood it to be?

It would be scary! Leaders who feign certainty and give you scapegoats allow us to offload that fear.

Where does this leave us?

// Uncertainty is scary

// Facts can be threatening

// The pursuit of truth is hard work

// But the truth is knowable

Do not turn the responsibility of discerning the truth over to someone else. Your uncertainty will ultimately remain because they didn’t give you information; they told what to think. If you want to deal with this uncertainty, you gotta put the pieces together yourself. But I promise you this: calling out your own beliefs and naming your uncertainty rewards you with agency. Take those threatening facts as starting points for curiosity and evidence collection.

We’re pursuing the truth, not looking for certainty.