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A few passing clouds. Low 27F. Winds light and variable.
Updated: January 9, 2025 @ 10:00 pm
Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations.
Manish Nandy
Manish Nandy
Months ago, anticipating the presidential election, I wrote a column for The Post and Courier suggesting the new leader needed to solve the country’s biggest problem: the left-right polarization and the anger and acrimony it generates. The polarization peaked; its bitter fruits still persist. Any rational exchange is arduous; genuine problems, economic and political, cannot be politely explored and bilaterally solved.
Yet I believe I made a mistake. The country’s polarization probably is not its biggest problem. Something else has emerged as a bigger menace. Something that makes all discussion dubious and nearly all palaver pointless. It is the world of make-believe and sheer falsehood through which many Americans will now approach their political dilemmas.
Lies, pure concoction, false claims, blatant misrepresentation, outsize exaggeration, statistical jugglery and out-of-context distortions are pouring out of politicians, party organs, think tanks, academic groups, news and social media. Granted, political battles are always venues for hype and hyperbole, but seldom have we seen on such a large scale the total evisceration of truth and the creation of two contradictory universes that scarcely relate to the same country.
Is the United States experiencing unprecedented prosperity with a steady, sturdy rate of growth, or are its people suffering from terrible deprivation and decline? Are its citizens facing depression and losing their jobs, or are they seeing virtually nil unemployment and a dynamic, vibrant economy? Are businesses leaving the country for other shores for fear of punitive taxes, or are they flourishing and attracting overseas investors? Is crime surging with people afraid to step out, or have serious felonies declined far below previous years? Are immigrants intruding in millions from prisons and asylums abroad and taking citizens’ jobs at the best, and killing them and eating their pets at the worst, or are they desperate people fleeing penury and violence and filling hard-to-fill low-paid, low-skill jobs?
These are factual questions to which there must be truthful, verifiable answers. Those answers would be and should be mostly unambiguous and incontrovertible. We have superb economists and political analysts, research centers and think tanks, hard-thinking analysts and clear-eyed journalists to guide us and instruct us. One imagines we could talk sanely about these questions, discuss intelligently with our neighbors and arrive at mutually understandable — if not agreeable — conclusions. That is not the situation.
Why not? Because a universe of discourse does not exist. What exists is a world of lies and distortions, exaggerations and fabrications.
A well-educated, well-intentioned neighbor with whom I took a long walk around a lake recently felt aggrieved that her favorite leader has been compared to Hitler. She was not assuaged that the comparison had been made by a respected general who was a close associate of the leader and on the grounds of constitutional conduct. When I tried to steer the conversation to the earthier ground of economic indices, like employment or manufacturing, and cited the rather congruous conclusions of two highly regarded and acutely opposed newspapers, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, she promptly cast them as heinous fabricators.
She seemed emblematic of my several cultivated friends who would not read both of these excellent newspapers at the same time — or even one of them. Most are reluctant to disclose what they read; I am tempted to suspect they probably don’t read any newspaper or magazine at all and get their views from one preferred television station.
Some months ago, when an impeachment proceeding of an erstwhile president was roiling the headlines and conversations, I found to my chagrin that strongly opinionated friends did not A) know the origin and meaning of impeachment, B) explore the constitutional significance of the procedure or C) ever care to study the case histories of successful impeachment in American history. All my friends had strong opinions, but these were based on no more than the highly tinted, borrowed views of others. Few had a scintilla of facts or basic information.
This indifference to facts and data — and even knowledge and understanding — on the crucial issues of the day troubles me greatly in a country where the opportunity to gather facts and data is abundant and accessible. That is the way lies flourish. Cordell Hull, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of state, once said that a lie gallops halfway around the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on.
Hannah Arendt, who helped us understand Hitler’s — or any perverse ruler’s — regime, pointed out that some leaders lie not just to make us believe their lies. They lie so we don’t believe anything anymore. “A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong,” she wrote. “With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”
That is the biggest peril we seem to be facing now.
Manish Nandy of Mount Pleasant is a former U.S. diplomat and World Bank official. He is a columnist and the author of “The Stranger in My Home.”
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