Truth Redux

I watched Ambassador Sondland’s impeachment hearing testimony this past week. The alternative on that particularly evening was the Democrat’s debate, which I imagined would play out more like a Disney political satire. “Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs: The Struggle Is Real”. Apparently after five or six debates, democratic politicians have not yet finished noodling over how they’re going to undo the undoings of President Trump. The merry-go-round shitshow we call a pendulum now seems headed to the undoing of the republic itself. So yes, watching the impeachment hearing was a no-brainer.

Sondland’s testimony was refreshing to me, as I hope it was to most independents.  On the surface his testimony was clear. But strange bedfellows being what they are, it was not enough for the partisan masses. Many Democrats struggled over why he hadn’t pounced harder over cross-examination browbeatings. Meanwhile across the aisle, the hearings were repeatedly condemned as a “charade”. Apparently when it comes to attacking their Democratic nemesis Republicans suddenly find religion in fancy French words.

Sondland’s testimony was refreshing because you could tell by his demeanor that he did not care one bit if Republican or Democratic politicians were happy with him. He genuinely couldn’t care less if they were butthurt over his reading on Trump’s words. And he did so respectfully, mind you. Like the proverbial icing on the cake, there it was in all its glory: his personal interpretation of Trump’s hyperbole. An outrageous interpretation to Republicans, but not quite the smoking gun Democrats needed. When he acknowledged at browbeating-point that Trump never told him directly to seek a quid pro quo, you could hear the deafening sound of red microphones dropping. 

Of course Trump didn’t tell him that. Trump wrote the book on not saying what he’s saying. He called it “The Art of The Deal”. Trump once recollected a moment of self-discovery, when his book writer told him that his big secret to success was actually in the art of hyperbole. And just like that, Trump had stumbled across his political calling. For those not familiar with the word, hyperbole is defined as “exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally”. 

Sound familiar? Well, it shouldn’t. Exaggeration, while it may have its limited place in daily life, is the slippery slope through which every machiavellian leader has taken entire nations down. It is the stuff of fork-tongued manipulators, who speak in a way that allows them to backpedal when confronted by the actual truth. It is the mother of all twisted minds. And it is especially rich coming from a heartland who cried out for a leader to “tell it like it is”. The same folks who keep taking a bullet for their doublespeak leader, constantly making excuses and translating what Hyperbole Man meant.

Make up your freaking minds, Trump followers. Your “telling it like it is” moral ground turned out to be one of the worst swamps our nation has ever witnessed. An exaggeration is not in any conceivable way “like it is” - since you are alluding that “it” is the truth. An exaggeration is a calculated distortion of whatever you need “it” to be. Your logic failed miserably, even if some of us gave it an honest listen. You thought you were sending Rambo to teach the world a lesson. What you got instead was more like Rambling Man. Which is precisely why Sondland’s testimony was a breath of fresh air. His short and simple answers revealed way more than a mere quid pro quo: they reminded us that hyperbole is at its dark core the unraveling of lies masquerading as the truth. 

If and when we finally manage to do the right thing again, Trump’s followers will experience a “Hunt For Red October” watershed moment. In that story’s climax, as their own launched torpedo is seconds away from blowing themselves out of the water, the commander from the hunter-turned-hunted submarine berates his captain: “You arrogant bastard, you have killed us!”

Sondland didn’t care what words Trump used, or abused. Through the clarity of his own words his testimony reminded us that the truth, when exaggerated or distorted in any other way, ceases to be the truth. Once it vanishes from the moral ground you’re standing on, as god is your witness divided you’ll fall. Oldest history lesson in the book. 

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?

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