“Truth isn’t truth” says the president’s lawyer. His senior adviser prefers to call lies “alternative facts.” The president himself likes to launder lies through the phrase “people are saying.”
We should assume that all politicians spin the story, but spinning is different than lying. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” So far, though, this White House has gotten by on its own facts.
A society that gives up on the pursuit of truth can’t find justice or have trust in systems or processes. Which makes it wild that, with the political world upside down, we are looking nearly two years down the road for a politician to save us. Placing all our political hope in a savior seems misplaced. It is time to look to ourselves first, and thereby force politicians to reach higher.