Comment by armchairhacker
6 hours ago
Truth exists and matters. Even for far-away events like news, where "truth" is impossible to prove beyond doubt like hard science. Even for informally-defined concepts like justice, where "truth" is ambiguous and partly subjective. There are answers for the former that are more probable, and for the latter that resonate with more people, and those tend to correlate with the answers that are more conducive to whatever goals one has (even greed), and especially (utilitarian) long-term human prosperity.
The truth is unfathomably complex yet coherent. White lies lead to bigger lies that eventually unravel, because the implications of a lie are more lies. Sometimes even lies that seem like they'd never "blow up in your face", because humans aren't perfect. Some obvious lies one can accept and pretend are the truth, and it does work...until it doesn't, because those lies have implications that can't be accepted.
Unfortunately it can take a long time, until the lie no longer matters and/or the liar is dead. But truth practically always wins in the long-term, even historically for the losers (yes it's impossible to disprove that people and groups have been erased, and random nobodies are forgotten; but today we can even read burnt scrolls and know lots about the "Lost Colony" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Colony)). More importantly, I believe truth wins more often and faster than most people argue, to the point where one should generally assume it matters. Though I can't prove it, like the events/concepts I'm describing, assume otherwise at your own loss...
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Related to the recent ICE shooting: even some conservatives oppose the MAGA narrative, look at https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservative/. Others will never defy MAGA, but they aren't the majority; Trump won but with barely over 50%. Truth exists and matters.
81mil votes for Zombie Joe in 2020?
J6 as a revolution, with 0 weapons?
Russiagate laid bare in Congressional testimony as a Jack Smith fabrication?
$ Billions in fraud in MN coming under scrutiny?
Do go on about "The Narrative" and its relation to objective truth, please.
- There's clear evidence Biden won in 2020, like Trump won in 2024. Even Republicans conceded this, and Republican-led investigations found no wrongdoing.
- J6 happened and wasn't legal: you can't just walk into the White House and intimidate people, even without weapons. A rough analogy: imagine I walked into your house, started chanting and intimidating your family, then afterwards claimed I was "protesting" your home ownership.
- Russiagate was exaggerated. I'm confident that Russia is influencing US politics, but I wish the focus wasn't on who they're supporting, rather that they're trying to increase tensions so the US collapses inward (which they're succeeding at). Even if Putin did benefit Trump, it's not something he controls, so I don't feel it affects his viability; Putin endorsed Harris for 2024, and it didn't affect her viability.
- The MN Somali fraud seems to be real and is another Democrat embarrassment. I'm not yet convinced that it's $billions (or that this is real money as opposed to inflated valuations), only because Somalia's entire GDP is $8 billion; but I'm not convinced otherwise, and this is under (even state!) investigation so we'll probably get more info soon. Nonetheless it looks terrible, and I haven't heard a good response from Democrat politicians, although some ordinary left-leaning people admit it.
You're right that "The Narrative" is not the truth, and that matters too. You even left out a few things like the BLM riots and Hunter Biden.
But nowhere in the above comment did I mention The Narrative; I mentioned the (apparent) murder of Alex Pretti by ICE agents. And in this specific case, The Narrative appears to be aligned with the truth, as evidenced by the multiple videos.
Furthermore, I hold that Trump's Narrative is generally far less aligned with the truth than The Narrative (AFAIK the left hasn't posted a photoshopped image of a suspect, or claimed something as extreme as that Hatians were "eating cats and dogs", among many other examples). And that matters. It would be ideal for both political parties to be as close to objective as possible, but I believe in the long run, their lies and spin hurt them both.