Gosh darn it, we can we ever get over the idea of TRUTH here.

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

It's not about truth. It's about the way in which one conveys truth. In short it's about power!!!!

I'm not saying that there is no TRUTH; I'm just saying that the human subject can never have any access to it. Give up on the TRUTH project, people. The repubs. have. They believe in a TRUTH, but they know that there's no communicating it. Therefore, they have Arnold, McCain, and Rudy speaking Prime Time at their convention.

I'm really frightened by the F 9/11 posts here. The movie may represent the complete TRUTH. It may not. Who gives a shit? Certainly not Michael Moore. He wants Bush gone. He would do anything to do so--including manipulating the TRUTH (which means both emphasizing and redacting--two diametrically opposed complaints I've seen on DU).

Moore gets it. Do you?

[BlueEyedSon]

1. So we're down to "our lies are better than their lies"?

I'm not buying it.

[shraby]

2. I don't buy it either.

Moore put certain truths together to emphasize them, but they still remain truths. It's like saying peanut butter and jelly makes a good sandwich is still the same thing if you say bread with jelly and peanut butter on it is good to eat.

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

5. EMPHASIZE!!!!!!!

EMPHASIZE!!!!!

That's my point. There is no accessible TRUTH (which doesn't mean it doesn't exist). We can approximate the TRUTH. But so can the right. But they've given up on that project. Please, I beg you, just look at election 2000. They took our playbook out from underneath of us. The first words that came from James Bakers' mouth was, essentially, "We don't know what the truth is." In other words, "I'm going to put it in question, then assert what it is."

Guess what? We lost. And the worst part?????? It was the academics of this world who questioned the idea of TRUTH in the first place. Can we please take it back?????

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

3. If you live in a Bill O'Reilly dialectic world.

Dear God. Is this what we've come to? Truth statement against TRUTH statement? If this is so, then my point is absolutely proved: rhetoric matters the most.

What lies are you talking about? I'm talking about framing the TRUTH (or whatever you want to call it). Some here feel they have the TRUTH figured out, that it is cemented, concretized. I'm silly enough to believe that it may change every once and awhile.

So why don't you go ahead and lay the TRUTH out there for me.

Or try not to react with the type of rhetoric many of us here (and by many of us, I mean me :-)) have grown tired of.

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[HawkerHurricane]

4. Go wash your hands.

I hate to say it, because it's so negative... but I've been reading up on how the conservatives took over the media in the years after the 1964 election by claiming the need for 'equal time' against nuetral newscasts because unbiased news made them look bad... so they had to add THE TRUTH to the media... and of course, THE TRUTH was always right wing conservative...

Now I need to go wash my hands.

[FlemingsGhost]

6. Facts are facts.

Moore's film is an edited collage of researched fact-finding. No amount of politicizing, or cynicism, will change the "structural integrity" of the film's basic concept. There is no illusion. The words were spoken, the deeds are done. Micheal Moore's opinion of George W. Bush, his motivation for creating the film, is completely irrelevent.

The simple choice we have as a thinking, feeling subjects experiencing Moore's artistic expression, is to either acknowledge the presented information, or deny its existence. Action and reaction to facts is entirely of our creation.

(edited for grammar)

[JayS]

9. Of course someone could also present truths to make Bush...

...look like an effective leader. It's all in what you choose to select for presentation.

[FlemingsGhost]

11. But can they present facts?

:evilgrin:

[JayS]

14. Sure. You just pick and choose which ones will make the...

...case you wish to present.

[Zorra]

35. Possibly. But those truths cannot negate the truth that Bu$h is a

lying, corrupt, destructive, anti-democratic leader.

Some truths could make Hitler look like an effective leader. But those truths could not negate the fact that Hitler was an evil POS.

The question is, do American's want an evil POS like Bu$h as their leader?

Not this one.

[JayS]

50. I think Americans can be sold on about anything if the message...

...is properly marketed.

[checks-n-balances]

7. This is splitting hairs, IMHO - a post-modernism point of view, I think

I'm puzzled by your statement:

I'm really frightened by the F 9/11 posts here.

Why?

Anyway, all I know is that lots of the RW crap that's passed for manistream news for at least 10 years is NOT even TRUTH, let alone THE TRUTH. One of the beauties of the film is to finally hear something that we know is FACT and not some spin by RW corporate America.

If this country doesn't inform the public with factually correct information, then it's not a democracy anymore. Of course we all have our own spin & opinions, and it's difficult to be completely objective.

But we can do BETTER than rethugs who depend upon LIES to get their POWER. That's CHEATING.

Edited for grammar.

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

15. Well, you used a great right wing term, "post-modernism,"

but I'll ask you what I ask them: what do you mean by this nebulous word?

Why do you associate the recognition of TRUTH with a consciousnesses of our use of rhetoric as "lying." This is a trait I believe the right has pounded into your head (along with the rest of America). It's a great talking point, but please don't believe it. You're quite dangerous if you do.

They enter this fight with a distinct advantage: their use of "TRUTH" means more than yours. They have embraced it all along; we haven't. We've exposed "truth" as rhetoric, which is as close to TRUTH as you're going to get.

You want to fight on the turf they've been defining for years. You'll lose. Michael Moore and I will win. This is what he recognizes and utilizes. God bless him.

[checks-n-balances]

41. Wrong - I don't "want to fight on the turf..." and I don't want to FIGHT

at all. I'm not the combative one.

You ask me what I mean by postmodernism, yet you proceed to assume that I may have meant what the RW says it is. How ignorant of me to not know that was a RW term. Why bother to define it for you since you assume someone has already pounded their own beliefs into my head. Frankly, I don't know what the hell you're talking about.

Again, you've mentioned being "scared" and I asked you about that, but you didn't answer. Now you're saying "It's a great talking point, but please don't believe it. You're quite dangerous if you do." Dangerous to whom?

You assume I want to fight, and "You'll lose. Michael Moore and I will win."

Maybe I do lose, but you really lost me a long time ago in your initial post so that's why I posted back. Sorry I posted in the first place, though, because it is much too esoteric for me to think about any more at this late hour. Perhaps being combative is not typically your style, but this particular thread is too much like an intellectual pissing contest. Besides, you've already decided that you and Michael Moore have "won" this discussion about TRUTH anyway.

I guess post #34 comes closer to what I was trying to say in the first place, and I wish I had expressed it that way in the first place.

[Swamp Rat]

43. Are you joking? "Post-modernism is a right wing word?"

How about "truth?" Is that a left wing word?

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

10. TruthIsAll, I wish I could say that calling people "trolls" was your means

of defense. But from what I've seen it is not.

So I'll take your post seriously.

First, by your premise, would you say the Christians, Muslims, or Jews are correct?

O.K., we'll move farther East: the Taoists, the Hindus, the Buddhists?

I understand that you like your version of the TRUTH. I'm sure I like a version similar to yours. The only difference between the two of us is that I'm willing to admit that mine is a version.

I'm willing to say that it's a version that I believe in. It's a version that I'm willing to SACRIFICE to rhetoric so that we move closer to TRUTH than anything before.

Or are you voting for Kerry because he represents the TRUTH and CAN DELIVER it to you?

Curious?

If the TRUTH means that much to you, one would think that you'd never abandon it.

I mean this post as a challenge to your mind, not to your character. Unlike the boards on the right, I believe we can disagree (and call each other "delusional" or even a "troll") and still be on the same side.

Cheers,
G.U.

[TruthIsAll]

12. I regret the TROL comment. That is the TRUTH. Mea culpa.

I will vote for Kerry. That is not a vote for TRUTH. It's a vote to end the insanity that is Bush.

Everyone is capable of twisting the TRUTH to serve their own ends. True. But the real TRUTH exists. And that's what I constantly strive for in my posts.

And the Dems are much closer to TRUTH than the Repukes.

The TRUTH is that Kerry is pandering. But he feels he needs to do so in order to win. I think he is too cautious. But what do I know?

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

18. TruthIsAll, please never apologize to me.

I know your heart is in the right place. Plus, I usually deserve whatever beat-down I get; unless you didn't know, I can be an ass sometimes.

Here's how I take the TRUTH:

The TRUTH between Kerry and Bush is this: with Kerry, we'd still have 900 American soldiers alive; 6,000 + soldiers not maimed; 20,000 Iraqi civilians still breathing.

I guess you could say that the TRUTH between Bush and Kerry is relative; all the rest is commentary.

Peace, bro/sis,
G.U.

[seabeyond]

13. banging head on wall...........again and again

ya not about truth right, lol lol lol lol

what a concept

[markses]

17. Can we ever get over the Socrates-Sophist debate here?

Holy Parthenon, Batman! It looks like the Beowolfian monstrosities are taking on the side of Gorgias (or, better yet, Protagoras), while the vast majority of liberals are (surprise, surpise), running with Socrates (if not Plato): truth v. effect! Dialectic v. rhetoric!

I'll weigh in for rhetoric above "truth," although the entire exercise seems rather pointless. If you are full-speed ahead with rhetoric, grendelsuncle, then there is little need to debate fine points of "truth" (Gorgias picks this up rather quickly in the Platonic dialogue, and even the "evil" Callicles ends up with a whateverist shrug). Just go about your rhetorical bidness as per usual. It is only if you secretly harbor that damn truth virus that you would even be concerned about such matters. Let folks believe that Moore is "exposing" a truth or even "the truth" about the Bush Administration. That's the hook that persuades and excites them. What's the problem? Truth is a rhetorical technique like any other. To get into a dialectical operation between truth and rhetoric is to already have given up the game to truth. If the folks want to believe in a split between truth and masquerade, or science and ideology, or whatever variant of this same ole shit that passes for current, use that to rhetorical advantage. Get rhetorical work done within these terms. From a rhetorical perspective, I don't understand what problematizing the split buys you.

I won't even go near the thorny epistemological problems of some other poster's ludicrous assertion that "facts are facts" (a point which not even the most rigorously "empirical" physicists seem to assent to any more). As the Euro-trash hero Dieter once said: Your story has become tiresome. It only took 2500 years.

THat said, I'm gonna have to say that Michael Moore is infected with the truth virus. He probably really believes that he is exposing the truth behind the lies, drawing open the veil to show the real. Is that a poor understanding of how this film functions so well? Yes, of course. Every eras deepest cynicism is open for all to see; there is no sudden moment of enlightenment or scales dropping from the eyes. The movie works, rather, by jacking up the intensities that are already circulating in the public (and these have to do not with "information" strictly speaking, but with affective states of trust, fear, inclusion and exclusion, capacities and potentials, all of which pass through bodies). That Moore happens to use the trope of the secret/revelation in order to access these intensities is not incidental (it happens to be a particularly useful trope for pushing on these affects); but I still think he mistakes the trope for the real activity, as do many on this board. Which is not, of course, a criticism of his film. The film works, rhetorically. That the director is not particularly clear on how it is actually working is secondary, and unimportant. Then again, I may be wrong. Moore's fascination with the way FEAR circulates in populations signals a deep interest in affective investments. That said, for Moore fear always seems to be tied back into an information model, as a kind of "noise" that interrupts clear communication. So again, mistaking a trope for an actual function.

[FlemingsGhost]

19. Phaedrus, is that you?

:shrug:

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

20. So, to make a long story short, you agree with me,

as, dear LOVING GOD, your avatar would suggest. You've done a nice job of laying out the positions of the apparent dialectic, except that there is none.

Nowhere, NOWHERE, did I suggest that there wasn't TRUTH. I simply suggested, as any simple-minded neo-Kantian phenomenologist would, that the TRUTH is inaccessible to the human mind due precisely because of human subjectivity. It's the old "the-objective-eye-can't-see-the-eye-that's-watching-itself" thing.

Your post make my point throughout. I suppose you just wanted to show your smarts. Good job. You are smart and well-read.

But your dialectic straw man falls apart. I never made the rhetoric/"truth" split. I think giving up on the TRUTH via rhetoric is a good idea, however--especially if it continues to lose us elections.

[markses]

21. You're quite hostile

So smarmy, my goodness. Neo-Kantian phenomenologists dancing with their subject and their objects? Lordy lord. And I'm the one trying to show off my book-larnin'?!? Of course, one need not wait around for the neo-Kantians to make your particular point (you could do it with Gorgias, truth - ahem - be told), which strikes me as a sophomoric brand of simple relativism. I would also continue to argue that you are recapitulating the dialectical question of truth and rhetoric by 1) raising the issue in the first place (why should you care? what's your investment?))and 2) drawing out the Epistemology 101 question about human subjectivity (one always wonders how these supposed subjects and objects emerge, and how they are conjugated, but we can leave that aside), which plunges us all headlong into this silly "debate" once again. So, I suppose I do agree with the broad strokes version (effecting a change in leadership is the important action to be performed, and the obsession with truth on this board is a bit disconcerting), but, as you yourself say, any emphasis - and, it follows, de-emphasis - entails a transformation, so one can't really make a long story short without being reductionist and, in this case, a bit haphazard.

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

22. Oh, markses, I've been so friendly to you in posts past.

I was hoping you took the post in the utter sarcasm in which it was given. All this Platonic/Neo-Kantian funny business. Yechk.

I've said before, anyone with a Foucault avatar has my ear.

Can I make a guess as to your age/education?

2nd year Ph.D.? If you're only an M.A. student, congrats.; you seem to be able to bullshit yourself ahead of the game :-). If you're farther along, I'm sure you're just dumbing it down for your audience (myself included).

[markses]

25. Ha!

I finished a degree years ago, and went on to other things. But I am dumbing it down. ;-)

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

27. Cheers, baby.

There is NOTHING wrong with being overeducated (and I use that word only in its most vulgar sense--seeing as how we're taking Plato et al).

[markses]

28. Since

I retain a capacity for wonder (we are talking Plato, after all), I am rather perpetually undereducated (and I use this as a term of art).

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

30. The true mark of knowledge:

To admit that one doesn't know much?

I'm the dumbest of them all, damnit!!! :beer:

[Name removed]

23. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

24. I don't get your response.

Was I supposed to leave?

Did I shame you in another post?

Are you still mad?

[markses]

26. I don't get these posts

Is this the secret way of accusing somebody of being a disruptor without breaking the rules? It's juvenile.

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

29. Some of us who haven't cornered the market on TRUTH,

and are readily willing to admit it, are taken with a heavy dose of skepticism here.

That's o.k. I'm never offended, really. I understand. At least the poster who questioned my longevity didn't question the logic or reasoning of my post. I can handle the ad hominems, just not the dismissal out of hand of a post which can at least be considered as legit.

But I do only have 400+ posts, and I do question a lot of the premises around here (though I could be classified as a traditional--etymologically--anarchist before anything else).

[markses]

32. I wanna play the guessing game too!

Here we go.

Since you recognize a visual of Foucault, and since you refer to academics as "we," and since you have that moderate condescension towards graduate students evinced by many professors, I'm gonna go ahead and guess that you've completed a PhD. However, I don't think you deal with graduate students that often outside of conferences, so you're probably at a teaching college rather than a research university. I don't think you're trained in philosophy, since your terms are somewhat vague and a little bit dated (especially with regards to subject-object); I guess training in what is kind of sadly now called "English Studies," with some graduate school time teaching a first-year composition course. I was promised a guess on age, but didn't get one. I'll try, though. I'm thinking mid-40's, simply because I can't imagine anyone under 40 using "Gosh Darn It" when they're revved up about something.

Let's put it together: Male, 45-50, PhD in English (let's say, from a large R-1 school but not Ivy: University of Maryland), teaching at, let's say Hamilton College.

How'd I do? I think I may be biased toward the East Coast here.

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

36. You give me FAR too much credit, though not hardly enough.

Hah!!! How's that for a non-answer answer.


First, teaching at an R1 has very little to do with interacting with grad. students; it's called tolerating them ;-).

I lay off the techno-jargon here (how's that for old-school verbiage?). I am thoroughly trained in phenomenology, though I am formally trained in English (well done). And your bashing of what English depts. have done to philosophy is well deserved--from what I have seen. Perhaps Foucault has everything to do with this? Gee, you think?

I will not comment on the level of my education. Maybe I'm a grad. student, maybe not.

I used "Gosh Darn It" because the mods. seem to enjoy deleting my posts. So my language would have been more forceful had I not had any fears of the thread being shut down eventually. Talk about panopticism :-)

You are biased towards the East Coast; if I went to U of Maryland, I'd kill myself.

[markses]

48. Poor Foucault

The poor man gets blamed for all manner of intellectual sins, generally by people who don't read his work very well, and for people who claim to have read his work, but have only skimmed it. A shame, really.

Are people still doing phenomenonology at all? I can't imagine why.

[T Town Jake]

31. TRUTH depends on who's writing it...

...and who's reading it. EOM.

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

33. Now we're getting somewhere.

I think your reaction is spot on. But which is it? Whose reading or whose writing (and for all of you grammarians out there, it could also be "who's reading and who's writing")?

Do we each come to every text with a priori assumptions? What does that mean when we write a text? What does that mean when we read it? Can we ever really get at authorial intentions? Are we always conscious of our own intentions as we read? In general, in the polemics of the American political system, I'd say, yes we can be pretty sure about some authorial intention. But don't we really try to nail each other on the specifics (see every election ever to answer this question)? Don't we love to extract the specific from the general. Look at what they're trying to do to Moore.

[Zorra]

34. Democrats have this kind of "truth tradition"

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".

Personally, I'm not really into Straussian or Machiavellian philosophy.

Jefferson was into truth. I'll stick with TJ.

We all want Bu$h gone, but IMO, most of us are not willing to become corrupt like the republicans in order to get rid of Bu$h. If Bu$h was an honest leader, truth and fact would not be effective in bringing him down. But Bu$h is corrupt, and MM has combined truth and fact in art as a communication device to expose Bu$h for what he is. Bu$h is officially toast.

The truth is gonna set us free.

[FlemingsGhost]

37. There is no such thing as "truth," only facts.

And even those are illusions to be embraced or denied.

Want to be free? Quiet your mind and make a break for it.

(Quick! the guard isn't looking ... )

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

38. And by "facts" I suppose you mean, "pieces of a narrative."

Yes?

And any given narrative has its own built in constraints, yes? Are there "facts" that comprise these constraints? I imagine so.

Narrative, by the way, doesn't mean "lie" or "untruth."

Some rely on what is meaningful versus what is "true."

[Zorra]

40. If you tell me that the sun will rise tomorrow, I will accept it as fact,

based on my previous experience. There is a slim possibility that your narrative about the sun will turn out to be wrong, and the sun will not rise tomorrow. But I'll accept it as fact, and true, that the sun will rise tomorrow.

Willie Nelson tells a story about the time his then-wife came home unexpectedly and found him in bed with another woman.

"Are you going to believe what you see, or are you going to believe what I tell you?" he asked.

[FlemingsGhost]

42. By "fact" I am referring to all that comprises ...

"The Grand Illusion." In other words, the human condition. The limited intellectual capacity of the species that only allows us to grasp concepts that can be defined, controlled and manipulated.

The "truth?" We might as well be attempting to define "God" or "love."

(on edit: typo)

[SoCalDem]

45. And there are layers of facts/truths

"Just the facts, ma'am" may have been enough for Joe Friday, but our times are complictaed.. The "facts/truths" are used in very clever ways to sway opinion...

example..

a pedestrian is hit by a car and killed. The story can be reported in many ways, depending on which reporter 'got the call' that day, and what his/her biases may be, or by what he/she wants the emotional effect to be.

version 1... "Mr Sanchez was hit and killed today in ....., as he crossed the street..He was xx yrs old and is survived by Mrs... and xxx , a son,and xxx a daughter. Services are pending.


version 2... "Mr Sanchez was hit and killed today in ....., as he crossed the street..He was jaywalking at the time, and had been ticketed numerous times for that offense..He was xx yrs old and is survived by Mrs... and xxx , a son, xxx a daughter. Services are pending.


version 3... "Mr Sanchez was hit and killed today in ....., as he crossed the street..The driver of the car was driving on a suspended license and was under the influence of alcohol.He was xx yrs old and is survived by Mrs... and xxx , a son, xxx a daughter. Services are pending.


All three scenarios are/can be true....but it depends on the biases of the person reporting, whether a simple article that rouses no passion will be written and reported as truth, ...or will a reporter tell more of the story..or even bother to find out more of the story??

We are totally at the mercy of what the "delegated" scribes tell us about the goings on in our world..

We will never truly KNOW what the absolute truth is...IS there absolute truth??

[Zorra]

46. Well, maybe you are right...

I think I know one thing but I can't remember what it is at the moment.

The thing is, it seems a belief system helps me to function and survive, and I believe I "know" certain things, based on past experiences, (and possibly certain other factors), upon which I make my choices for action. Now, I never accept anything as completely true, only that it appears to be true to me. Just in case my perceptions are skewed, I sometimes observe other human beings in order to ascertain if their perceptions approximate mine to a degree that I can comfortably validate the accuracy of my own perceptions. This also allows functional interaction with others, kind of a personal use of the "scientific method" of predictability which I usually unconsciously use, along with my conscious mind, for choosing my actions. But, whatever, I realize that my, for lack of a better term, "knowledge" is subjective and finite, and that existence itself may be illusory.

But I'm still more than likely going to wake up tomorrow and slam down a few cups of good strong coffee and have some breakfast.

(With all due respect, as far as my mind and freedom go in regard to your suggestion, you are, most likely, in no way qualified to make any accurate observations about, or give me any significantly enlightening advice in, those areas, although it does appear that you may have learned something important to your personal well-being.)

I still haven't gotten to the point where I can get my mind to a place where I don't need to eat, drink, or breathe in order to stay alive in this physical realm.

How about you?

[Jose Diablo]

39. There it is

The precision of arithmetic (another rhet word like rhetoric) expression.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".

"Self-evident" truths are axioms, not provable but the foundation all that follows from them. In the end analysis, its all faith.

[SoCalDem]

44. Ack.. I can hear the freepers' pointy little heads exploding...

How sad for them if they stumble across this thread.. If it's not philosophy according to Luke & Bo Duke, they will not understand a word.. Of course they will just accuse us all of being "French...or Grecian"...

WTG...:)

[laura888]

47. please provide examples...

...of how you think F911 "manipulates the truth."

The repubs have given up on the truth because the truth shows them unfavorably. They are afraid of the truth.

The dems are saying "shine the light in every dark corner."

Please provide examples.

[sendero]

49. I agree with you...

.... people get hung up on the "truth", when for many of the complex situations we find ourselves in, the truth is unknowable. One person out of 20 telling a lie is all it takes to keep you from the truth. We can seek and get close to the truth, but we can never be 100% sure that we know it. About anything.

What does matter is that our version of the possible truth gets played. And up until f911, that rarely happened.