The Demagogue’s Dilemma

The forty-fifth president of the United States is a man of few words. Literally. That much should not be considered a flaw. In fact, it can be a wonderful gift. But when you are a man that knows few words you better choose them wisely. By his own admission, one of 45’s favorite words is “hyperbole”. By his followers’ admonition, they love him no matter what he says because “he tells it like it is.” By logical omission, the world has not seen irony like this before.

Hyperbole is at essence an exaggeration. How large or small of an exaggeration depends on your appetite for the unadulterated truth. Either way, it is a distortion that contains elements of truth at the expense of tarnishing it. We may not initially recognize distortion, but if we look closer we will find it: it is the stuff that dreams are made of. It is in our fantasies and in our painkillers. Distortion is Dr. Feelgood. On the surface it is the rose-colored glasses we wear on a dreary day. But in its heart of darkness, it is the “Code Red” ordered by Colonel Jessup when we can’t handle the truth. Not all of it anyway. But filtered, medicated… distorted? Oh yeah. We want it on that wall... we need it on that wall.

If you’re lucky, a part of you may sense there’s a fair amount of distortion in hyperbole. But you sanitize it as a “casualty”. You reconcile it as a small price to pay, in an ideological war over your god-given right to believe in whatever you damn please. 

In a hyperbolic society, winning becomes everything. It consumes everything. Hyperbole is the friendly fire of your convictions. You accept that it may take down even those whom “you have nothing against”, but it’s better than the alternative. At least according to your fears. Because that twisted strand in our DNA, the one that produces fear, sees losing as the first tumble to a fate worse than death: the loss of freedom.

Losing starts when you are captured, whether figuratively or literally. If you are captured, even if you are one of the good guys, you instantly become a loser. According to the book of winning, if you were captured you really did not know how to win in the first place - otherwise you would have never been captured. It is simple, circular logic. A Machiavellian deal maker, like a good chess player, is moves-ahead of the captured loser. If he knows there’s a good chance he will be captured, the deal maker will sell his soul to avoid the fight.

Distortion carries one more side-effect that we don’t often question, much less associate with hyperbole: raising walls. It turns out we don’t just raise walls to keep people out. We raise them because we do not want others to see who we really are. Serial winners love to build walls around their promised land, purposely excluding aspects of the truth they do not like.

There are many proverbial forks-in-the road throughout our lifetime. But the sum of the crossroads that force you to choose between truth or hyperbole can amount to the Via Crucis of our lives. The truth can be cruel, painful, scary. It can trigger either a tipping point or breaking point. It is at that juncture that you forge your destiny: stick with the undistorted truth at the risk of great sacrifice, or cherry-pick it in the name of winning. There is no middle ground there. One way or another the mighty universe could not care less about your fears and perceptions. It does not see winning as truth, or truth as winning. It’s not that the two don’t overlap, of course they sometimes do. But the tragedy of human ignorance is that they don’t overlap as much as we think they do. Guys like Hitler spent years “winning”. But it is fool’s consolation to say that guys like Hitler always lose in the end. Try telling that to the millions tortured or massacred. “In the end” is an optical illusion, a mirage. If guys like Hitler always lose in the end, history would not have a propensity to repeat itself so goddamn much. Ad nauseam. 

If it’s meaningful consolation you want, consider the fact that the universe will never distort the truth. It can’t, because it’s one and the same. Our existential fork in the road is ironically simple: seek the truth at the expense of some loss, or scurry on to the promised land of winners. A safe house were you are promised protection from losing. A Pleasantville surrounded by walls made of amputated truths. 

As someone who is not a fan of distortion, I‘m forced to pronounce myself a serial loser. I have already lost much, though nowhere near as much as many others. Oh I have won much too. But regardless of my net wins and losses, I’m forced to accept that longing for the unadulterated truth doesn’t make me morally superior. I’m forced to realize that the moment I see truth-seeking as the “winning” path is the moment I’ve wandered off to a dead-end.

That’s where the tip-or-break point comes in. If you’ve managed not to break, congratulations: you have earned a rare choice in life. A chance to come closer to the truth than most mere mortals ever do.

I choose the losers. The ones that were crucified. The ones that were captured. The ones that gave more than they took, which makes them net losers. I choose the ones that don’t trickle, or worship the past. I choose the present. I choose the science of real, not the art of the deal. 

I choose the risk of losing, even though I too attended demagogue school. I choose it knowing I will never fully grasp the whole truth in my lifetime. I choose risk knowing that I will continue to win and lose my way through mortality, with no option for permanence either way. And therein lies the demagogue’s dilemma: if the illusion is good enough, is the price of real victory worth it?

...