Since I’m not a huge fan of politics, especially as it is practiced today, I so wanted to be able to write about words today. (Word nerds need a fix to maintain our sunny dispositions.)

Alas, Rudy just couldn’t help himself.

But I guess in a way I am talking about words, or at least one specific word: truth.

If you tuned in to NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, you would have seen a somewhat bizarre moment between host Chuck Todd and Rudy Giuliani, attorney to the president (transcript courtesy of NBC):

GIULIANI: “… I am not going to be rushed into having him testify so that he gets trapped into perjury. And when you tell me that, you know, he should testify because he’s going to tell the truth and he shouldn’t worry, well that’s so silly because it’s somebody’s version of the truth. Not the truth. He didn’t have a, a conversation—”

TODD: “Truth is truth. I don’t mean to go like —”

Chuck Todd is all of us right now.
Image found on Yahoo.

GIULIANI: “No, it isn’t truth. Truth isn’t truth. The president of the United States says, ‘I didn’t—’ ”

TODD: “Truth isn’t truth? Mr. Mayor, do you realize, what, I, I, I—”

GIULIANI: “No, no, no—”

TODD: “This is going to become a bad meme.”

GIULIANI: “Don’t do, don’t do this to me.” [Makes facepalm motion.]

TODD: “Don’t do ‘truth isn’t truth’ to me.”

Todd was right. It didn’t take long for it to become a bad meme. (Challenge the Internet, and the Internet responds!) But we’re tackling the “truth” thing here. And good Lord, this sounds like the whole “definition of is is” discussion again …

In or out of context, Giuliani’s quote is troubling. According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, truth is “the body of real things, events, and facts: actuality … the state of being the case: fact … the body of true statements and propositions.” Notice it doesn’t qualify it with “if you believe it to be so.”

Sadly, we’re in an era now of “alternative facts” and “fake news” where if you don’t believe something to be true, regardless of clearcut evidence that shows it is, then it’s not true. It seems it may be Giuliani’s entire legal strategy to offer an alternate explanation for events in this case, despite ample evidence against it (take Don Jr.’s emails and Giuliani’s story about the meeting with Russians at Trump Tower, for instance) … one more reason not to hire him.

I wrote this while wearing bright purple socks with carrot cake on them (the image, not actual carrot cake … that would be messy … and weird, even for me). For someone whose idea of truth is based not on facts but on what he “feels” is true, that might be a blatant lie. That way, raw images (photos, video) can be written off as the ramblings of a lunatic, as can witnesses attesting that they saw me wearing said socks (which are pretty darn hard to miss, even if I don’t walk around in my stocking feet). Imagine if it had been the mint-green socks. (They’ve got bright pink strawberry shakes on them. I think they could probably be seen from space.)

This brings to mind a translated quote from philosopher Søren Kierkegaard: “There are two ways to be fooled: One is to believe what isn’t true, the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”

One may believe that a platypus is a figment of a child’s imagination (seriously … duck bill, beaver tail and otter feet???), but when confronted with the actual living, breathing, egg-laying mammal, are you really going to continue saying it’s a hoax? Reportedly the first scientists to see a pelt and sketches, and to examine a preserved platypus body in the late 1700s, deemed it fake, but the real thing was sort of hard to dispute.

Well, except in the Orwellian world where you’re told not to believe what you see and hear unless it comes from the supreme overlord.

Prosecutors generally don’t file charges if they don’t believe they can make the case based on the evidence; this could be eyewitness statements, or relevant authenticated physical evidence such as documents, blood or fingerprints. If that evidence is too thin, it would be a waste of taxpayers’ money to proceed. A simple he said/she said doesn’t really rise to the level of strong evidence.

But sure, go ahead and keep believing that if you say something enough it will be true and that what you see with your own eyes isn’t. That’s what I keep doing … still waiting for chocolate to be declared a health food, though. And for cookie crumbs to have no calories.

Politicians, as they always have, will trudge on, claiming the sun is the moon and grass is gray if that’s what their supporters want to hear or they think it makes them sound brave and strong.

Hillary Clinton in 2008 told of landing under sniper fire in Bosnia, a story that was soon debunked by eyewitness and photographic evidence. And her husband definitely did not have sex with that woman (wink, wink).

Richard Nixon claimed the White House had no knowledge of the Watergate break-in, but that was soon proved false by links between the burglars and his re-election fund, testimony from those involved, and tapes Nixon had made. Many more have tried to sell such lies.

Whenever someone tries to convince us of an alternate reality, it’s up to the American people and the media to call them out. We need to be wary if what someone says sounds self-serving or just too good to be true, and hold that person accountable.

And if we’re fooled by something ridiculous, we have no one to blame but ourselves. OK, and the people who keep telling us ridiculous lies.

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If you read the print edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, you’ll see a new logo with my Wednesday column.

I’d been reticent about putting a photo with the column, but Karen Martin and I had the idea a few weeks ago to have John Deering do caricatures of us for our columns. We like them, as do others who’ve seen them, so we plan to do the same with the other opinion columnists on Voices and in Perspective. I’ve also made it my WordPress gravatar.

In the caricature, I’ll be young and cute forever. At least my mommy thinks so.