In an attempt to save face and cover his dismal inaugural exposure four years ago, the then newly-elected President had to resort to a strategy that would beguile his next four years in office. The water hit the proverbial wheel on the first day in office when a dispute arose in the land as to just how many folks showed up for the inauguration. Looking at information provided by the National Park Service, the press approximated that there were about 160,000 odd people lining the mall. Rather than confuse the issue with such reliable data here, let’s just say someone at the White House believed that this number was a crucial turning point in American history. A war on the news media — aka fake news — ensued, and a new political weapon was unleashed by some blonde with bad makeup: “alternative facts” — which could make the attendance any number you wanted it to be.
How well I remember being taught many alternative facts as a child of the old south: We actually won the war of northern aggression! The south will rise again. Black people are inferior, and they prefer segregation. You cannot legislate morality. Outside agitators are undermining wonderful God-given way of life.
During my freshman year in high school, this rather buxom woman wearing her DAR sash appeared on our stage during one assembly holding what seemed to be a children’s book about rabbits. She was there to show us the naked truth that this book was produced by communists — “godless communists” — to undermine a well-known fact of southern history and kiddie lit: little black rabbits and little white rabbits never play together! Never! It was at that moment that I discovered this tiny gizmo in my gizzard: my crap detector went off.
“An inconvenient truth” was the phrase featured in Al Gore’s 2006 documentary on global warming. It’s a different nuance to “alternate facts”. The truth of global warming is very verifiable, and the science was there to prove it. The problem was finding enough ears surrounding enough open minds to be convinced that this just might be the honest-to-God situation that would end the world, not with a bang but with the familiar and simple whimper: “I can’t breathe”. When Galileo discovered those other moons of Jupiter and exclaimed that this was indeed a solar-centric universe, the Church’s reality was confronted with both alternative fact and inconvenient truth to its Aristotelian norms of God’s creation which was turned upside down and inside out.
Lest we forget, when our white forebears thought they had discovered America, they coined the phrase “we hold these truths to be self-evident“, and dared to proclaim that the first of these was that we are all “created equal”. However, the DAR lady got on stage to declare that some of us were created more equal than others. And there were several inconvenient truths that hampered their early endeavors: certain indigenous people were already living on our land, and owning black lives mattered in establishing capitalism as the American economic principle, their equality, freedom and human dignity to the contrary notwithstanding.
Ever the politician, Governor Pontius Pilate knew how to stir up the mob with right wing religious zealots yelling “crucify him” [“Lock her up” would be an echo of the same mentality] and military tactical forces ready to kill another traitor other than Barabas who was guilty of insurrection. After his exasperating conversation with a would-be king of the Jews, Pilate washed his dirty hands of the whole mess with a sarcastic and rhetorical question, nullifying any answer: “What is truth?”