{"id":15976,"date":"2017-01-29T01:17:32","date_gmt":"2017-01-29T08:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=15976"},"modified":"2017-01-29T01:17:32","modified_gmt":"2017-01-29T08:17:32","slug":"prairie-lights-a-new-wrinkle-in-the-war-on-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/01\/prairie-lights-a-new-wrinkle-in-the-war-on-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Prairie Lights: A new wrinkle in the war on truth"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ed\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick<\/p><\/div>\n

You know you\u2019re living in strange times when the maker of the world\u2019s most popular dictionary feels compelled to send out a tweet defining the word \u201cfact.\u201d<\/p>\n

As National Public Radio reported, there were actually two tweets, one defining \u201cfact\u201d as \u201ca piece of information presented as having objective reality,\u201d and a later one saying that the word \u201cis understood to refer to something with actual existence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The people at Merriam-Webster sent out those tweets after seeing a dramatic increase in the number of people looking up the definition of \u201cfact\u201d on the internet\u2014which itself is a sign that we are living in strange times.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s as if there had been a sudden uptick in the number of people looking for a definition of \u201cred\u201d or \u201cdog.\u201d<\/p>\n

The puzzlement over what should have been a simple word was created, as everyone knows\u2014if it is possible to \u201cknow\u201d anything anymore\u2014by Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway\u2019s use of the phrase \u201calternative facts\u201d to describe falsehoods, or, more plainly, lies.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still not sure what to make of the incident. Conway\u2019s remark didn\u2019t seem to be offhand. It was more like a deliberate rebuke to journalists, letting them know that the rulebook has been thrown out and there was nothing they could do about it.<\/p>\n

And why not? That approach certainly worked for Conway\u2019s boss, who skipped merrily from outrage to outrage, all the way into the White House. If your entire campaign is built on a contempt for decorum, tradition and intelligence, on a headstrong aversion to facts, why would you change course after winning the election?<\/p>\n

It would be a mistake, though, to think that Trump is solely responsible for this state of affairs. It has been building over many years.<\/p>\n

We have long been confronted with alternative science in response to the actual science of evolutionary biology. Creationism at least had the virtue of being honestly presented as a theologically based rejection of science.<\/p>\n

But it is difficult to change laws, or textbooks, based purely on religious considerations, so the alternative science of intelligent design was cooked up as a way of smuggling theology into the realm of science. It didn\u2019t persuade any real scientists\u2014no more than alternative facts have swayed thinking adults\u2014but it gave some cover to politicians and policymakers who wanted to advance fundamentalist religious ideas while pretending to believe in science.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>The funny thing is, intelligent design cannot accept basic astronomy or basic geology any more than it can accept the theory of evolution by natural selection. Publicly, though, proponents of intelligent design talk only about \u201cDarwinism,\u201d apparently because it\u2019s the only branch of science that impinges directly on our dignity as human beings, leaving people more susceptible to unscientific claims.<\/p>\n

In much the same way, it used to be unwise to come out as an admirer of Adolf Hitler. It was better to espouse \u201calternative\u201d explanations of the Holocaust, claiming, say, that Jews were only put in refugee camps for their own protection and died from cholera and other diseases.<\/p>\n

In the era of Richard Spencer it might not be necessary to disguise your admiration any more, but it still serves a purpose to deny that Jews were the target of a deliberate attempt at genocide.<\/p>\n

Do I even need to mention the heavily bankrolled claims that climate change is a hoax, or that, in the alternative, it is happening but has nothing to do with the activities of the 7 billion of us crawling all over the planet?<\/p>\n

Thanks to the internet, the industry of alternative facts has reached previously undreamed-of production levels.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve got a couple of years, and don\u2019t have a job, you might want to hop on the web and look into the alternative facts regarding the 9\/11 attacks. The great mountain of evidence gathered to support the many alternative theories of 9\/11 makes the proponents of intelligent design look downright lazy, or unimaginative.<\/p>\n

Still, even considering all that history of falsehood, we have entered a new era. It was one thing when alternative facts were being peddled by neo-Nazis, creation-museum keepers and the sort of people now able to \u201cprove,\u201d within a day or two of each new school shooting, that the shooting was a hoax.<\/p>\n

It is quite another when the president of the United States and his representatives lie without blinking, then admit they are lying and then coin phrases that mock the very concept of truth.<\/p>\n

Anyone still capable of recognizing a lie has no choice but to resist, speak out and stay true to the truth. We don\u2019t have any other alternative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know you\u2019re living in strange times when the maker of the world\u2019s most popular dictionary feels compelled to send out a tweet defining the word \u201cfact.\u201d As National Public Radio reported, there were actually two tweets, one defining \u201cfact\u201d as \u201ca piece of information presented as having objective reality,\u201d and a later one saying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1170,2853,3382,1752,5444,5240],"class_list":["post-15976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prairie-lights","tag-creationism","tag-donald-trump","tag-holocaust","tag-intelligent-design","tag-kellyanne-conway","tag-richard-spencer","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}