Truth or ‘Truthiness’: Whatever Happened to the Facts?

Dr. Errington Thompson

Maybe I’m wrong, but it sure seems like times have changed.

At the risk of sounding like one of those old-timers in the movie Barbershop, it seems that words like “integrity,” “honesty,” and “truth” have lost their meaning. As the two major parties clash over everything from healthcare to Afghanistan to global warming, it seems that they can’t even agree on the basic facts.

We see this not just in our leaders but everywhere around us. The other
day when I was in my own barbershop, an older gentleman was sharing his
conspiracy theories involving the government, our preachers and, well,
everybody. He had a lot to say. Unfortunately, a lot of what he had to
say was devoid of facts. I don’t blame him. This is the way our society
has been going for the last 30 years.

“Truthiness” is a term coined by Stephen Colbert, defined as “truth
that comes from the gut, not books” — in other words, stuff that we
wish were true. Although “truthiness” did not start with President
Ronald Reagan, he brought it to the forefront.

Former Speaker of the
House Newt Gingrich, conservative columnist Ann Coulter and others have
perfected this means of communication, in which you start with
something that is the truth, then segue into something that is almost
true, and end up with something that is completely false. To the
unsuspecting observer, you made sense.

I’m not saying that either the right or the left has a monopoly on
truth. Neither side does. But it does seem as if the right wing, much
more than the left, tends to prefer “truthiness” over real, honest,
fact-based truth.

For example, to say that the problems in the black community have been
caused by the U.S. government is laughable. Government programs like
welfare did not solve our problems, maybe they didn’t help the black
community as planned, but they surely did not, as some claim, cause our
joblessness and lack of education and our youth growing up without
fathers.
Those problems did not arise with, or from, the introduction of welfare
or President Johnson’s Great Society. As far back as 1897 W. E. B.
DuBois, in his book The Philadelphia Negro, describes joblessness,
black men fathering multiple kids, and a lack of education in the black
community. The same problems we see now — and still haven’t solved –
have been going on for over 100 years. But proponents of truthiness
would rather blame those who try to address the problems than try to
fix them.

Do you remember this past August? The right wing was pushing several
items that simply weren’t true. They told us that health-care
legislation included “death panels.” There was no such thing in the
legislation. They told the elderly that, in order to save money,
Democrats were trying to kill them off. That, too, was simply a lie.

Another of the common themes that we’ve heard over the last several
years is that gay marriage will destroy the institution of marriage. I
simply don’t understand this logic. I don’t know how anybody else who
wants to tie the knot – a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, or a
man and a man – I just don’t grasp how they’re going to affect my
marriage.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that my marriage is mostly affected by
me and my wife. I might face a higher likelihood of divorce if I forget
my wife’s birthday or buy her something ill-advised like a vacuum
cleaner for our anniversary, but I’m confident that our marriage won’t
be in any trouble at all just because some gay couples want to wed.

Social issues aren’t the only target of truthiness. October’s economic
numbers came out and showed that the economy still is not putting
people back to work. Republicans have stood up and asked, “Where are
the jobs?” This, too is a little gamesmanship. Last month 190,000 jobs
were lost, the lowest figure since the recession started twenty-three
months ago.

Now, any economist will tell you that business will need to
start making money and feel good about their economic prospects before
they begin hiring workers again.

The lackluster Bush recovery was driven by the housing market; the
bursting of that bubble – and the collapse of construction, finance,
and unlimited credit – was one of the major causes of the recession. So
if people want to criticize Obama’s economic plan, they need to ask
where new jobs are going to come from. They won’t come from housing,
which is still depressed; they’ll have to come from Obama’s green
energy initiatives and other growth fields.

I guess my point is that many people think that they know the answers
to the ills of America. Most of our problems are complex and require a
thoughtful solution. Anyone who gives you a knee-jerk answer to a
complex question is probably leading you astray. There really are
definitive truths in our society, and the world is made up not of
truthiness but of empirical evidence and provable facts. We just have
to be willing to find them.