Pontius Pilate famously asked the question “What is truth?” in response to Jesus’ statement, “For this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” Jack Nicholson, in the character of Colonel Jessup in the movie “A Few Good Men,” angrily spews the classic line “You can’t handle the truth” to the judge who is demanding answers to difficult questions. Thomas Jefferson, in his finely-crafted introduction to the Declaration of Independence, writes “We hold these truths to be self-evident” before he enumerates certain human rights which in his view need not be explained or defended. Jesus, foretelling his own death, tells his followers that if they continue to practice his teachings, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Martin Luther King once said, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.”
In what is often being called a post-fact world, where talking points guide thinking and determine policy and facts are just impotent rebuttals, there is no greater barrier to knowing and standing for truth than the “both sides” rationalization: “Both sides do it,” “There’s fault on both sides,” “There are good people on both sides.” Judgments of right and wrong have to be based on some standard of truth, and if truth is the standard, two diametrically opposed sides can’t come off as equally right or equally wrong.
Two children are fighting. Both are swinging arms and throwing punches, so they’re equally guilty, right? Send them both to their rooms and give them no dessert. That’s the lazy way out. Somewhere behind the visible scene, however, is the truth. Who started it? Why did he/she start it? Did the other attempt ways of solving the problem before resorting to physical engagement? Was anything about the optics perhaps deceiving?
The only way to make a fair decision in this situation is to search for the truth, but that carries risks. Maybe the parent, teacher, or coach doesn’t want to know the truth, because with greater knowledge comes greater responsibility. Maybe the truth would force the adult to deal differently with the two children, and that’s always awkward; chances are the one judged to have the greater responsibility will be angry at the arbitrator. So the arbitrator takes the easy way out and treats them as equally at fault. We’ve all done it.
In grown-up politics, the “both sides” argument is the lazy way out. Citizens and officials who can’t face the responsibility of being the arbiters of truth and right take the Pontius Pilate escape and simply wash their hands, declare both sides flawed, and crawl back into their cocoons. But why would anyone not want to know and stand for the truth? Lots of reasons come to mind. The truth is not always as “self-evident” as those named by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, so finding it is going to take a lot of work. Knowing the truth may demand action; it may affect relationships; it may shift one’s entire worldview. Acknowledging the truth may also cause a loss at the polls. Rather than setting one free, the truth may be too uncomfortable to bear, so many understandably choose retreating to their comfort zones or clinging to a deeply flawed leader because his coattails are necessary for achieving success in the next election. Another Martin Luther King quotation is, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
I doubt there’s anyone in the world who’s never turned a blind eye to an uncomfortable truth: the spousal affair, the errant child, the injustice under which many people in the world are forced to live. But here’s the problem: Without truth, there can be no standards of conduct, no morals, no ethics. If nothing is true, everything is acceptable. If your truth is different from my truth, the only principle either of us can violate is our own, so there’s no common standard to which we both can be held. One of my favorite news commentators has recently made frequent use of the word “nihilism,” “the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless.” Where there is no truth, life has no meaning. What to do? Some create their own truths.
Cult members’ truth is whatever their leader tells them it is. The Peoples Temple members who followed Jim Jones all the way to the Kool-Aid table believed his paranoid apocalyptic vision of imminent nuclear war, and he persuaded them only he could insure their safety. Cyrus Teed convinced his followers that the earth is hollow and we actually live on the inside, not the outside, of the globe. They followed him because he promised to turn Estero, Florida, into the New Jerusalem. As a bonus, those who could maintain celibacy would achieve immortality; but then Teed died and failed to resurrect himself after the three days his followers kept him propped up. Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, founders of Heaven’s Gate, kept their followers faithful by promising there was a spacecraft out there which was going to transport their members to the next level of existence.
All attractive promises, to be sure. Believing them, however, means denying formerly held standards and sources of truth, science being the first to go. I recently helped my seven-year-old grandson find some answers to a question he’d been meditating on. We did a quick Internet search, since that was the resource most readily available to us. We read one source, and then I told him we had to look up more because you never take just one person’s answer to a question. You get multiple (in this case, only two) perspectives and then compare. When all other perspectives have been invalidated, however, as in the case of a cult, there’s only one thing left to believe: the leader’s word. And that’s always going to lead to trouble.
Conspiracy theories give people a system of truth that is, for whatever the reason, more comfortable than reality. They create communities in which people who have felt spurned by powerful elites can turn their perceived oppressors into cannibalistic pedophiles or turn catastrophic natural events into intentional acts performed by a people group whom they see as threatening their supremacy.
Following a national leader who tells the lies, which those who perceive themselves as oppressed want to hear, creates a community in which they are the elites and the ones holding the reins of power. Who flies flags for a president? Who wears clothing and decorates their vehicles or their homes with paraphernalia advertising their hero worship? I don’t know about you, but the most I’ve ever done is put out an occasional yard sign, no matter how much I like a candidate. I’m glad Joe Biden is president, but it’s going to be a cold day down there when I put a cut-out of him in my rear car seat (Yep, I’ve seen it, for you-know-who). Yet I guess I can understand the appeal for someone who is desperate for a sense of belonging.
For that cult who flies the flags and wears the clothes and adorns the trucks, their leader’s 30,573 lies documented by the Washington Post during his four years in office are their fervently held truths. Everything else is “fake news” and evil liberals’ attempts to discredit their dear leader.
In high school general science class, I learned that an acid plus a base equals water (and a salt). Something in the acid neutralizes something in the base and vice versa (You expected scientific names? Ninth grade was a long time ago). Pitting two groups against one another and declaring them equal neutralizes important differences between them, and what’s lost in the process is truth. Making them equally right requires disregarding the truth. Making them equally wrong leaves no one with the moral authority to expose the truth and adjudicate the problem.
If there are “good people on both sides,” neither side has the right to be outraged or to take the lead toward resolution. Americans are where we are today because too many of us can’t handle the truth. It’s not stating the profound to say that our country’s two major political parties are both flawed, that both of them have some wrongheaded ideas, some wacky candidates and elected officials, and some extremist factions. However, the “both sides” narrative would have us believe the flaws are of equal consequence, but believing that narrative requires disregarding some essential truths.
Truth: Good people do not turn over their consciences to a maniacal leader. Truth: Good people do not try to overturn the results of an election. Truth: Good people do not attempt to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power in a democracy. Truth: Good people do not attack the United States Capitol. Truth: Good people do not mercilessly bludgeon police officers, leaving one dead and 140 severely injured, with mental scars so deep that two have since taken their own lives. Truth: Good people do not threaten to harm or kill those responsible for carrying out elections just because they don’t like the person who won. Truth: Good people do not defecate in the Capitol building (or in any other public place) and do not smear their feces on the walls. Truth: Good people do not steal, loot, and terrorize. Truth: Good people do not pray for God’s blessing and assistance to commit felonies. Truth: A good person, who holds command over the most powerful fighting forces in the world, does not sit in his living room watching the assault unfold on his TV set and do NOTHING to stop it. Truth: Good people do not buy into nutso (my academic word) conspiracy theories. Truth: One party is rife with conspiracy theorists and elects some of them to Congress. Truth: The other party is not known for harboring crazy conspiracy theorists or for electing them to Congress. Truth: All of the above has been done by members of one political party. Truth: None of it, or perhaps a small amount of it, has been done by the other party.
So please remind me again how “both sides” are equally flawed.
Another truth: Good people do not justify their, or their tribe’s, transgressions with a “what about” question.
Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel has said,
“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.”
Political party affiliations and other labels should also become irrelevant. Both sides can’t be right when their ideas and actions are at opposite poles. The “both sides” defense helps the wrongdoers, never those who would bring justice to bear. It provides all who wish to be uninvolved, who can’t handle the truth, who are more comfortable in their cocoons or ivory towers, who would prefer to wash their hands of the responsibility of searching for and standing for truth a pious-sounding defense. This is no time to be silent or neutral.
I end with the words of Thomas Paine, from “The American Crisis,” which I have quoted often:
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.”
Freedom is not cheap, but it’s well worth the price.