Two Truths

“Everything faded into mist.  The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.

               -George Orwell, 1984

I look about me and think to myself that maybe, in today’s world, there is not one, but two truths that are trying to but cannot coexist.  At least, while likely not true for universal truths, it seems that people are willing to adjust their definition of daily truths to one that coincides with their wishes and desires.

We often like to say: look at the facts, the evidence, because it cannot lie.  And while that is true, it may not necessarily be the truth of our daily life.  For some, truth is absolute realism.  Picture a painting of a table on which stands a wilted bouquet of flowers.  That may be what indeed a photograph would capture at that moment. 

Now picture the same painting but with a glorious and bountiful bouquet of freshly blooming flowers.  The painter may be thinking that if he tends to his garden, that will be the bouquet that he can paint next week.  It does not exist today, but for him it absolutely exists in the future and hence is part of his truth today.

Early in the Soviet era writer Maxim Gorky counseled a young writer that it is not enough to say “I wrote the truth.”  Rather, the author must ask himself two questions:  Which truth? and Why?  At that time Gorky was referring to the truth of pre-revolutionary Russia versus the truth of what Russia was becoming.

Much the same may be going on in today’s America.  Those who would have America remain true to her core values and the Constitution see truth as the descriptions, facts, and evidence that are true to that America and the traditional beliefs/values of its population.  Those who are looking for great social change see truth in the picture they paint of what we can be and are becoming.  To them it is true that a person can choose their gender or shift it as they please, resulting in statements such as “men can become pregnant”, a statement which is factually and scientifically inaccurate and thus not a truth to the realists, but something which those trying to recreate a future see as a realistic future truth and hence a truth to them today.

Obviously, these opposing truths and many others cannot coexist.  Laws are affixed to one reality.  Opposing truths result in opposing laws or just anarchy.  Education – its needs, goals, and how to achieve them – is similarly at odds.  How one manages everything, from the food one puts on one’s plate to international relations, suffers.  The concept of opposing truths is currently on full display in the reactions to the terrorist attacks on Israel:  those whose truth is the factual history of the region are in opposition to those whose truth is the factually inaccurate but desired narrative that Israel is a guilty oppressor.

If the revolutionaries (and that is perhaps a good term for the progressive Left and its truth) prevail, then their narrative which is their truth, while not the reality of today, will become the reality of tomorrow.

That might not be so if we retain a pathway to current and past truths of this country and its values, accomplishments, and failures.  But if they are not retained, even if only as part of history, then they will be lost, and the revolutionary truths will be the only truths.

Interestingly, some would argue that part of the reason for the fall of Soviet Russia is that it retained and revered its prerevolutionary classics.   The works of the great Russian authors – Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Chekhov, etc. – retained a picture of the prerevolutionary reality and the values it conveyed, values that were in direct opposition to Communism.  At least some have traced the intellectual force behind Gorbachev’s glasnost to be the youthful reading of Russia’s great literature.  “The Bolsheviks did not realize that by having their children read Tolstoy…they were digging the grave of their revolution.” (Slezkine, The House of Government, quoted in Morson, Wonder Confronts Certainty).

Perhaps today’s Progressive Left learned from that Bolshevik mistake.  Perhaps it is for that reason that they feel the need to cancel and destroy anything that represents the past and current truth of America and how they justify their openly asserted belief that free speech must be canceled.  If there is no other truth, then their revolutionary truth that is yet to be can become the only truth. 

The analogy is not completely misplaced because for the Progressive Left, the destruction and reimagining of America is as obsessive a cause as was the Russian revolution to the Bolsheviks.  As the Russian people discovered, when the revolutionary lie becomes the truth then the reality is not that of the glorious utopian vision, but a very ugly existence. 

But the Russian people had access to their past truth, a truth that was actually more real than that within which they lived.  If today’s Progressive Left Cancel Culture has its way, we and future generations will not have that access.  We will not know what else was and could have been, and our truth will be as hollow as the unachievable dream narratives of the Progressives.

Like Gorky we must ask: Which truth and Why?  The truth that has been America for 247 years, or the truth that the Progressive Left believes will become the new truth.  A vision is not a truth but a narrative dream.  America’s truth is fading into the mist.  We must not allow America’s truth to be erased and the Left’s revolutionary dream to become a nightmare of false truth.

(Image AI Generated in response to prompt “Two Truths in Opposition")

Thoughts Provoked by Prince Philip’s Funeral

 

As I was watching Prince Philip’s funeral yesterday, I was struck by what a beautiful display it was of Tradition, Faith, and Family.  These are the bedrock that holds us together, that makes us whom we are, that gives us strength, especially in troubling times.  These exemplify core principles that allow society as well as mankind to grow.  And these foundations for a healthy society are rapidly disappearing if not gone in America.

America used to be a land of Tradition, Faith, and Family.  Now those values are derided by the Left.  What the Left does not understand is that with those values comes a tolerance and a respect for others, as well as a stable society able to address its shortcomings and better itself.  Those principles do not hold a society static but give it the power to grow.

               Tradition

Tradition is defined as “the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on in this way.”  But the goal of the Left seems to be to completely cleanse America of the customs and beliefs that built her and made her great.  (Note I do not say perfect, but the beauty of America is that she aspired to a perfection and addressed the problems that stood in the way of that aspiration.) 

But now we have Cancel Culture which, in collaboration with identity politics, is a horribly destructive process.  The goal of the Left seems to be to rid the world of any trace of America and her traditions.  The Left has designated “winners” and “losers” in their identity labels.  If one is not a member of a favored identity group, they are being trained to deny and apologize for their heritage – for their customs and beliefs.  We have heard that White people are evil as are Christians or political conservatives. 

Just yesterday Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters told protesters in Minnesota to "get more confrontational" if Derek Chauvin isn't convicted of murdering George Floyd. (We’ll save the discussion of how this is a direct threat on that trial’s jurors as well as our concept of a fair judicial system with verdicts based on facts, not emotion or political agenda.)

This threat came on the heels of CNN’s Chris Cuomo saying “White people’s kids need to start getting killed” so there can be police reform.  And a Mercer Theology Professor writing and publishing a prayer in which she asks God to “please help me to hate White people.”

Yes, Whites, along with other unfavored identity groups would happily all be cancelled if not killed by true Left believers.  This while they select other, favored groups, to receive benefits denied to Whites simply because of the color of their skin.  Haven’t we been here before?  Racism is racism and, while this country has had a history of racism, it has also, because of its customs and beliefs, not to mention its form of government, been able to address those problems and move forward without turning around and destroying some other identity group.

               Faith

Faith is defined as “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.”  Generally, this means one’s God or religion or more generally a belief in something greater than oneself.  It is based on “spiritual apprehension rather than proof.”  But now it seems that the predominant focus is not on others or something beyond oneself, but rather simply on the self and making that self feel good.

We have self-love, self-care.  We have access to all sorts of material pleasures, all designed to make the self feel good.  Church attendance is at an all time low.  Respect for others (something every legitimate religion teaches) is becoming non-existent:  that is probably most reflected in the ease with which so many take the life of another as both a way to solve problems and a way to make oneself feel good. 

The Left’s new religion of “Wokeness” of which a part is their proclamation that this is some sort of humanitarian effort, is just the opposite.  Take one trip to the border to see the “humanitarian” efforts of young children so crowded (into what once when far less crowded were called cages) that they cannot even leave their “beds” (which are nothing more than a cover as they sleep on the floor).  How humanitarian is it when the Left’s border policies encourage child traffickers, coyotes whose greed often gets the border crossers they are “escorting” killed, or the huge increase in drugs which will end up destroying the lives of so many?

With the dismissal of Faith comes the end of true humanitarianism.  With the dismissal of true Faith comes the religion of self.  And we see that flourishing now as the real motivation of many in power as well as many of the Left acolytes is simply their own pleasure and power.  Faith gives a person, a family, and a country strength.  Its absence puts that country on the road to destruction.

               Family

Family is both “a social group made up of parents and their children” and “a group of people who come from the same ancestor.”  The family is the basis of all civilization and the family group, because it shares ancestors and customs, will include the elements of Tradition and Faith as those have developed within that family history. 

The Family – parents and children – is the basis for broader groups.  Families form tribes or villages.  Villages form towns.  Towns form cities.  Cities form countries.  What each of these groups will have in common is a similarity of Traditions, customs, and Faith.  They will not be identical, but they will be tolerant and find a way to live with one another to achieve goals that are common to their individual customs and values.

That is what America used to be.  But that is being destroyed as the Cancel Culture Left and its hate for seemingly everything that is, also is attacking the family.  Children are no longer a part of a family’s history and future; rather, they are simply something of convenience to be disposed of if they are inconvenient.  That includes not only early abortion, but late term and even post-birth abortion.  The current administration has just made fetal tissue approved for far more scientific studies.  That fetal tissue in large part comes from aborted children; demand for that (and thus for necessary abortions to provide it) will now increase.  And we’ve already mentioned child trafficking, and here we will include child pornography as more evidence that children are for many nothing more than a convenient furtherance of their own self pleasure

But the Family is also under attack in other ways.  Somewhere between 40 to 50 percent of marriages end in divorce in this country.   I suggest that is because of the loss of Faith and Tradition that make the sanctity of marriage less meaningful and condone ending that union when it becomes inconvenient or interferes with one’s personal pleasures.  And there is no question that the children of destroyed marriages suffer in so many ways.  Again, what is happening to the Family in this country is the result of a culture of self-love as not just the dominant but indeed the only important value.

               In Conclusion

Holding Tradition, Faith, and Family dear does not mean that a society is static or bound by intolerances of the past.  Great Britain, with it strong traditions, is not the same country that it has always been; it continually evolves yet maintains its Tradition, Faith, and Family.  Those foundations give a society the strength to evolve.

Those who care about this country should take a minute to reflect upon what we are losing as we allow the Woke Cancel Culture to ride roughshod over our Tradition, Faith, and Family.  The road we are on does not have a pretty ending, and, when we get there we will have lost something beautiful.