From True Lies to Truthiness: How Plato and Stephen Colbert Illuminate the Marketplace of Political Ideas

8/2/2019 From True Lies to Truthiness: How Plato and Stephen Colbert Illuminate the Marketplace of Political Ideas

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From True Lies to Truthiness: How

Plato and Stephen Colbert Illuminate

the Marketplace of Political Ideas Michael Charney

Author of

Chasing Glenn Beck:

A Personal Experiment in Reclaiming Our Hijacked Political Conversation

Posted to www.chasingglennbeck.com

March 23, 2012

I’ve been watching politics for most of my adult life, and I apologize. “Watching,” as it turns

out, is not a very constructive activity. Over the last year-and-change, however, “watching” has

evolved into “participating.”

Though that participation began largely as a tool — I was writing a book and wanted it to be

thorough, interesting, and amusing —that participation continues now, well after the book’s

publication. I occasionally ask myself, “Why?” and I don’t have any ready answers. Certainly anyone

who would prefer calmer days and lower stress levels would do well to avoid politics (other than,

perhaps, as a sort of parlor game discussed at a family holiday dinner, the kind where most people

say things they don’t mean or don’t understand just to see if they can raise the dander of some

second cousin they haven’t seen in two years and have always envied for their Lexus and Rolex.1 ).

Blissful ignorance, after all, has its place. It has its downside, too; blissful ignorance is likely why

we’ve moved from true lies to truthiness in barely a generation.

Plato first came up with the idea of true (or “noble2”) lies in Republic (giving the words to

Socrates in the traditional dialogue format of the time). For Plato, a true lie is one which is

1 On Twitter we call these people “trolls.” At family holiday dinners they’re referred to merely as “ jerks.”

2 Many scholars prefer noble, suggesting that it is a better English translation for the original Greek, γεννα ῖ ον

ψε ῦδος

http://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Glenn-Beck-Experiment-Conversation/dp/0984792708/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_1




http://www.chasingglennbeck.com/









intentional of necessity and used in order to promote a greater good. Since, of course, “greater

good” is likely (always?) defined by the opinion of those telling the true lie, it’s arguable that a true

lie is primarily presented as support for a believed ideology, one that those telling the lie truly believe

will benefit everyone.

Correlatively, true lies are often believed themselves by those creating them. Roger Shattuck,

in his informing book Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography points out also that the true

lie is often true because it is believed by the teller. The true lie, he says comes from “the soul of him

who believes sincerely that he is acting rightly.” So, in some sense, the use of the true lie in the

service of ideology is forgivable; you may not (personally) agree with the true lie or its purpose, but

you can at least respect the sincerity of the teller.

Not so with truthiness, the satirical term first coined by Stephen Colbert. “It used to be

[that] everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts,” Colbert said in an

interview with The Onion ’s AV Club. “But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all.”

While on the surface both the true lie and truthiness seem quite similar — both, after all, are

based on gut rather than logic or reason — truthiness has a uniquely cruel quality all its own. While

the true lie is told in service of a belief or ideology (and with sincerity), truthiness is used against the

other guy. It is designed to be a rhetoric of defeat, not of support.

Little more than a generation ago, the political sphere was ripe with true lies, gut-level beliefs

disguised as facts in, but built in support of ideas that people sincerely thought were best for the

country. But today that’s not the case. Today the political conversations are filled within Colbertian

truthiness — lies built from of whole cloth, then told not by people who want to build an argument

for something, but who want to tear down something they don’t like.3

Conservatism is both the purveyor and victim of this evolution in political rhetoric. We’ve

moved from William F. Buckley, Jr. who said this:

Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to

tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to

look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great.

to Ann Coulter, who said this:

Conservatives believe man was created in God’s image, while liberals believe they are gods. All of the

behavioral tics of the liberals proceed from their godless belief that they can murder the unborn because they, the

liberals, are themselves gods. They try to forcibly create “equality” through affirmative action and wealth redistribution

because they are gods. They flat-out lie, with no higher power to constrain them, because they are gods. They adore pornography and the mechanization of sex because man is just an animal, and they are gods. They revere the U.N.

and not the U.S. because they aren’t Americans — they are gods.

Buckley speaks as someone building; Coulter speaks as someone razing. The result is a

diminished view, an inarticulate view, a damaging view. We would do well to understand accept that

3 And, of course, echoed in 140 character snippets at the speed of light.



there is a place for Plato’s true lies in the political marketplace of ideas, but would do just as well to

ignore (or, better yet, chase away), those voices of truthiness that, despite the cute term used to

describe them, are fundamentally dangerous to our national conversation.

Documents

From True Lies to Truthiness: How Plato and Stephen Colbert Illuminate the Marketplace of Political Ideas