So today the White House Press Secretary, when asked about White House Chief of Staff John Kelly saying something that was factually incorrect, Sarah Sanders said:
“If you want to go after General Kelly, that is up to you. If you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that is something highly inappropriate.
CNN does a good job of being outraged over what is outrageous here, but I think we need to take a second and talk about it.
I studied both political science and journalism extensively in college (almost got degrees in both, actually– was the editor of the campus newspaper for two years, etc.). I walked away from journalism because I feared this sort of moment coming.
Just in case you’re not reading the subext, what Sanders basically said to the press corp here is “Kelly is a general. We support the troops and we love the troops, so if he said something and you don’t think it’s true you’re unAmerican and you’re not behaving correctly to call it out.”
Now she’s part of the Trump administration, a political entity that treats the truth the way most of us treat a toilet, but let’s stop and parse this.
In this construction, a fact is subject to the amount of respect you think another person deserves not for that person’s knowledge of the topic but because that person was a general.
That isn’t how democracy OR journalism works. That’s not how REALITY works.
We need to start taking a stand on these sorts of things, even if we agree with the statement being made or don’t see the harm of the transgression. If you are a person who says “why are you making such a big deal out of…” you’re my enemy, and you’re the enemy of freedom, patriotism, democracy and reality.
We cannot allow people to keep playing fast and loose with the rules for how we know that things are valid. I quit teaching political rhetoric this election because I couldn’t make myself be impartial. Trump did things that were simply wrong. Even if you support his platform (you know, if you’re a racist, sexist homophobic white asshole), you still have to take a moment to realize that anyone– even if you love the idea of it– using some arbitrary measure to determine the truth then spouting things like “fake news!” or “sad!” is extremely dangerous. That we didn’t laugh him off the public stage only serves to further illustrate how much danger all of us are currently in.
I used to use two examples– two hypotheticals– to illustrate how dangerous such a world can be.
The first one is a way to explain how people who were good hearted accidentally got sucked up into the Nazi movement in Germany. So imagine you’re a first-year student in my class. I come in wearing a blue Colts hoodie, something I did frequently back in the day because it was cold and I had a number of blue hoodies.
You are scared of how college is going, but I promise you that if you wear a blue Colts hoodie and cheer with me on Sundays, I will protect you. The cost to you is low. The benefit is high. When I have students raise their hands, most of them are willing to make this sacrifice.
Weeks later, I tell you that one of my fellow professors is a big Tom Brady fan. I tell you that if you want me to keep protecting you, you have to keep wearing the hoodie, but also you cannot take classes with or associate with that other professor. Most students are still in, though this is where one– sometimes two– ask me what is going on.
A week later, students who are in classes with that other professor have noticed how my blue-hoods are acting. I tell the students that to stay in our grand society, to continue to get tutoring and protection and to feel included they have to shun those students who like the Tom Brady loving professor. Oddly, most are still in.
The next week, I tell them that we’ve grown by leaps and bounds, as every section I teach and all the students in other years that have taken my class are all now blue-hoods. They’ve recruited friends. We are a legion. It’s time to kill the professor who hates Tom Brady.
No one is game for this. But… what if some of the blue-hoods are? Some would be, of course, if this was real, because that’s how cult-like pack mentality works. Some people go all-in. And if they are willing to do that, and I tell them “if anyone defies us, punish them,” suddenly there’s a mess. And that’s how Hitler eventually made people with no jobs, no prospects, no pride into proud, well-fed, modestly paid people who couldn’t turn their backs very easily when he told them to kill the Jews. When you get to “let’s round up and kill the Jews,” it’s too late to realize you’ve been allowing for faulty logic to create a fractured reality. You’re in the deep doo-doo.
It could all start with something as small as wearing a blue hoodie to please someone else, though. That could be the first step.
New example.
I’ve had a number of students in my time who, largely due to their parents, claim that America was founded on Christianity. It wasn’t. I am not saying that Christianity is bad, as such (different discussion), but it was not the foundation of our government. We separated church and state specifically to make sure no religion– even one most people liked– could determine policy. If you know your history, religion was one of the key reasons the colonists came here and started their genocidal quest to build America. The last thing they would have wanted was to build the structure for another church to do the same thing to them in the new world.
I have students who tell me we should legislate with the Bible. This is a hugely problematic idea, but this is what I ask them to imagine when they tell me it’s a great idea. I don’t want anyone’s religion to be oppressed, but if we let a leader rule with religion, what do we do when someone who follows a religion we don’t agree with manages to take power? It’s easy to ignore that someone’s claiming Jesus thinks we should do something when that person is doing what we want, but what would we do if the followers of, say, Cthulhu want to start having rituals to call on their dark lord as government sanctioned events? You might think “oh, that won’t happen,” but a decade ago, no one thought the loudmouth bankruptcy-loving real estate tycoon who loved to belt out “your fired” on his reality show would run the free world and now he does, so anything CAN happen.
I understand that people voted for Trump. I try to respect that, as much as I can. This is the first time in my life I actually find it difficult. I didn’t like GW Bush, but I respected him. I didn’t like Reagan or George HW Bush, but I respected them. I didn’t like Hillary Clinton as a candidate, but I supported her because she was certainly the better choice, and I respect when her supporters give me random static about supporting Bernie Sanders.
Trump horrifies me.
What I can’t understand is why anyone would allow someone to twist and defy the truth even in the face of evidence that he’s incorrect. We can’t be those people, that nation. That’s what we ridicule North Korea for. People do realize that on a global scale we’re seen as the idiots that are letting a trust fund kid with a Napoleon complex turn our country into his personal pissing contest, right? No one thinks we’re okay. Because we aren’t okay.
Love him if you love him, but call him out when he’s wrong. If you don’t, you’re going to be sorry when someone more evil and less seemingly incompetent takes that office and plays by the rules you’re allowing Trump to play by. He’s writing the playbook for a dictator, and his supporters are gleefully slapping his back in support.
You need to do better.