Truth and falsehood have never battled more in public discourse than today. Jonathan Swift, Winston Churchill and numerous pundits have observed that lies make their way around the world before truth has a chance to put on its pants. Why this is true is anyone’s guess. The truth of it is found on Facebook, Twitter and all across the internet.
Its pernicious implications have never been more apparent. The war in Ukraine is an act of outright aggression towards a nation that desires nothing more than its own sovereignty.
Putin-run media is convincing the Russian population that fascism needs to be defeated in Ukraine and that atrocities that appear on YouTube are staged by Hollywood actors at the behest of the Ukrainian government.
In the dark days of World War II, Joseph Goebbels became the propaganda minister in Hitler’s Germany. He famously said that if a lie is shouted loud enough and long enough that the person doing the shouting would believe it was true.
The truthfulness of this is being borne out on Russian TV in the way Russians are learning about their dead soldiers in Ukraine.
Allegiance to the truth should be a virtue that is embraced by everyone. Our current challenge is to understand that things can’t be true and untrue at the same time. The world is not flat; thinking that it is does not make it so. The earth revolves around the sun.
Contrary to what the bible may imply, this is a simple fact of astronomy. Some people still hold onto the view that the universe is only 5 million years old in spite of clear evidence that places the Big Bang at 13 billion years ago.
Truth is not negotiable. Some things are true and some things are not true. As simple as this may sound, it’s an important detail that gets overlooked repeatedly in the divisive world in which we find ourselves.
Not too long ago, spin doctors began to ply their trade in our media age with great success. Expediency became the coin of the realm and truth became collateral damage. As this has accelerated, bald-faced lies have appeared with greater and greater frequency, and shame seems to be non-existent.
Shading the truth and telling white lies has given way to dissembling on a level that no one would ever have thought possible ten years ago.
The result of relativizing the truth and walking away from honesty and shame is the divided country in which we live. Hot-button social issues have become bones of contention between liberals and conservatives, between traditionalists and progressives.
In this polarized atmosphere, disagreements are no longer contentious issues over which reasonable people may disagree; they are lines in the sand which separate good from evil, right from wrong, eternal life from eternal damnation. It is no wonder that the partisan divides within our nation seem to be beyond the point of healing.
When Putin attacked Ukraine, he had no idea that his actions would realize his greatest fear. Western Europe and most of the world have come together in support of Ukraine. Russia’s neighbors in Finland and Sweden are moving away from neutrality and looking to become part of NATO.
Accusations from Russian diplomats that the U.S. and NATO are fighting a proxy war against Russia are probably true and totally unforeseen by the evil man who has unleashed unspeakable devastation and death on innocent people.
The true blessing in all of this is the triumph of truth over falsehood. No one believes that fascism in Ukraine has provoked this war. Videos of mutilated civilians and bombed-out cities are not staged by Hollywood but concrete evidence of war crimes, which the world hasn’t seen since Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and the importance of free press and the shallowness of fake news are clearer than ever.
Lies bring about division and, if not called out, morph into facts that drive pernicious actions. Truth, in contrast, brings about unity and singleness of purpose. Lies are stains on public discourse.
Truth is like bleach that obliterates stains and creates clarity for making good decisions. There will always be disagreements about ways to advance the common good. Focusing on truth and calling out lies allow reasonable dialogue to flourish without branding opposing opinions as evil and immoral.
The democracy that we are trying to preserve is very fragile. It requires everyone to see ourselves as part of the solution and to walk away from being part of the problem. Dedication to the truth is the common ground on which we should all stand. Regardless of the culture wars, what unites us in our country and in our world are far greater than what divides us.
Living in the truth is the necessary thing that will keep us free.
Msgr. Paul V. Garrity is a senior priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and former pastor of St. Mary’s in Lynn.
