WHEN FACTS NO LONGER MATTER

President Donald Trump will relinquish his office at noon on January 20, 2021. While he is leaving the White House, his legacy will remain with us for some time to come. Among the details most of us will have difficulty forgetting is what appeared to have been a deliberate attempt at obscuring objective truths, rather than sticking to using unbiased observable facts not influenced by his personal feelings or opinions. It began early on, two days after his inauguration, on January 22, 2017, when his counselor Kellyanne Conway, during a "Meet the Press" interview, defended Press Secretary Sean Spicer's false statements about attendance numbers during the president's inaugural. When Chuck Todd pressed her to explain why Spicer would utter a provable falsehood, she stated that the press secretary was simply providing "alternative facts," the first time many of us were exposed to that term. Since then we have been bombarded with alternative "facts," half truths and blatant lies. As of August 27 of this year, the Washington Post's database logged 22,247 claims that could be categorized as misinformation or disinformation. During most of his time in office, observers counted close to 50 plus untruths each day. The White House has denied that objective truth actually exists. Mr. Trump's current lawyer Rudy Giuliani has explained that "truth isn't truth." "There is no way to determine who is lying and who is not" he insists. "Truth is inherently partisan. It is whatever you prefer or believe." It did not take long for the pundits to begin comparing the deliberate misstatements by the Trump administration with what George Orwell referred to in "1984" as "double speak" and "double think," a deliberate attempt to indoctrinate its political base and develop the acceptance of or mental capacity to accept contrary opinions or beliefs at the same time. Typical examples of this Orwellian concept are: "War is peace," "freedom is slavery," and "ignorance is strength." Trump's Orwellian "double speak" began with the lie about the size of his inauguration crowd, continuing with his early assurance that the coronavirus will go away like a miracle, and finally with his election meddling, during which, contrary to objective facts, the president maintains that he actually won "by a lot." Consequently, many in his base believe he did. "The Trump m.o. is not to lie convincingly. It is, in fact, the opposite - to distort the truth so blatantly that going along requires a cultish willingness to suspend disbelief." (Mother Jones, Oct. 9, 2020). Arguments made on behalf of the president are often ridiculous to the point of bordering insanity. Mr. Giuliani, for instance, advanced the belief that systemic election fraught perpetrated by the democrats during this past cycle was so refined that there was no discernible proof. At the same time, millions of believers are falling prey to a mass delusion about a secretive cannibalistic cabal popularized by Q-Anon. Mr. Trump maintains he does not know this group, except that they seem to like him. None of this is exclusive to the United States. Autocrats in numerous countries make use of deliberate misinformation - a.k.a. propaganda - to indoctrinate receptive populations. The idea is to flood their populations with so many alternative explanations that people begin giving up on the facts. It did not take long for political scientists to characterize the phenomenon as "post truth," an object of study for several different fields. "Post truth" became the Oxford dictionary word of the year in 2016. It describes the subject as a condition where objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. It identifies a growing international trend to where some feel emboldened to bend reality to fit their opinions, rather than the other way around. In substance, this is not a new concept. Historian and sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) drew a distinction between facts and values. He postulated that facts can be determined through the method of a value-free, objective social science, while values are derived through culture and religion, the truth of which can not be known through science. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) believed that humans created concepts through which they define the good and just, thereby replacing the concept of truth with the concept of values. Today "post truth" refers to a "philosophical and political concept for the disappearance of shared objective standards for truth," and the "circuitous slippage between facts or alt-facts, knowledge, opinion, belief and truth." When objective truth is replaced by a constant flow of disinformation, democracy is in peril. To quote former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who knew the Trump administration intimately, from a May 16, 2018 commencement address at the Virginia Military Institute: "If our leaders seek to conceal the truth or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom. This is the life of nondemocratic societies, comprised of people who are not free to seek the truth." Theo Wierdsma

ARE WE STUCK WITH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE?

Five times in our history, and twice during the past 20 years, the winner of a presidential election has lost the popular vote. In the election of 2000, George W. Bush managed to barely compile the mandatory 271 electoral votes necessary to win the election after being declared the controversial victor in Florida, winning that state by 537 votes. Al Gore, his opponent, actually won the national popular vote by 543,000. In the 2016 election, current president Donald Trump won in the electoral college by a count of 306 against 232 for Hillary Clinton, even though the latter amassed almost 3 million more votes nationally. Both results generated a popular outcry chastising our electoral college system, questioning why we would not use the popular vote tally to choose our president. In a 2018 survey, 65% of Americans indicated support to change the way we tabulate winners and losers during national presidential elections. Only 32% expressed their preference for our current system. However, when the survey wording included changing the Constitution to accomplish this, the popular vote preference dropped to 55%, significantly less, but still a majority. The questions remain: Why do we have an Electoral College? Why don't we change the system if that appears to be the popular preference? And what are the arguments that support the continuation of our current system? Our Founders feared factions and worried that voters wouldn't make informed decisions. They found themselves in a quandary. They did not want to tell the states how to conduct their elections. Many feared that the states with the largest voting population would essentially end up choosing the president. The Electoral College was a compromise. The compromise adopted at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 allowed the popular election of the president, but on a state by state basis. Each state's citizens would vote for president, with the winner taking all the electoral votes for that state, based on the number of seats that state had in the Senate and the House combined. The tricky part of the equation was how to account for all the slaves when determining a state's total population, since that number would determine the state's number of seats in the House of Representatives. The compromise the convention came up with was to count only three out of every five slaves as people, giving the Southern states a third more seats in Congress. The U.S. Constitution adopted during the Convention included this three-fifth compromise, which was not superseded until passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. Section 2 of this Amendment gave former slaves equal protection and voting rights. It specified equality for male slaves. Female slaves and all women were excluded. Today's supporters of the Electoral College argue that we live in a constitutional republic rather than a democracy. They maintain that the process is integral to our federalist, state focused philosophy, and serves as a firewall against fraud. It prevents systematic fraud by diffusing fraudulent voting across multiple states. The suggestion is that a small number of fraudulent votes have no impact on the outcome of a presidential election. They also submit that the College encourages a national campaign, because the power of small states with at least three electoral votes can act as decisive voices in close presidential elections. Moreover they point at the mess the Florida recount created in 2000, and suggest an even greater problem if this were to occur on a national scale. Some white supremacist leaders also spread the believe that with a popular vote white people would have less influence. California, Texas and Florida would elect the president. Minorities would do the electing. Popular vote supporters predictably suggest that our votes would count the same wherever they were cast. Whoever gets the most should win. A national popular vote would eliminate the "battleground state," a key feature of post convention campaigning, leaving most Americans alienated from the decisive phase of presidential elections. Partisans supporting the popular route acknowledge that attempts at amending the Constitution won't likely succeed. Any amendment would require a 2/3 majority in the House and the Senate, and support from 3/4 of the 50 states. To bi-pass this cumbersome process, some states, 15 at current count, initiated an agreement to elect the president by national popular vote - the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact - guaranteeing the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes across 50 states and the District of Columbia. The Compact ensures that every vote, in every state, will matter in every presidential election. However, the agreement won't take effect until its composite membership accounts for 270 electoral votes. Many questions remain concerning legal entanglements that need to be ironed out when this plan reaches fruition. In the mean time we appear to be stuck with what we have. Theo Wierdsma

IS IT TIME TO EXHALE?

For a few days this month, time stood still while the entire country, and , in some sense , much of the world anxiously held its collective breath waiting for the outcome of our, very consequential, presidential election. At this writing, the outcome is still in limbo. Our election was not just a choice between candidates, sandwiched between a confluence of multiple crises. Our country was asked to render a verdict on our role in the world, hold a referendum on the role of the presidency, the direction of our economy, our strategy to contain an ever escalating pandemic, and our ability to confront systemic racial inequity. The country wondered out loud if democracy would survive. Specifically, because our current president prematurely expressed his intention to challenge the legitimacy of the result if he lost. New York Times' columnist Thomas Friedman made it clear in one of his most recent publications when he questioned "Will 2020's election be the end of our democracy?" He suggested that a free and fair vote and the prospect of a peaceful transfer of power were both becoming contentious. Our president apparently resolved that there were only two outcomes on November 3rd, and electing Joe Biden was not one of them. Well before November 3rd, the rest of the world speculated about post-election international relationships and the future of traditional alliances. Many countries appeared less concerned with our ideological predisposition than they were with transactional considerations they had become used to with our current administration. Israel, Russia, Hungary, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, North Korea and others have profited from their constructive interaction with President Trump, and feared losing cloud if he were to lose the election. The predominant sentiment in the European Union is "hoping for a change." A reelection of Donald Trump would confirm that the U.S. is giving up on its leadership role in the Western alliance. French defense analyst Francois Heisborg suggested that a Biden presidency would be welcomed as "a return to civilization." Meanwhile, in Canada, "the government and the overwhelming majority of Canadians [were] looking for Trump's defeat." (Nelson Wiseman, Political Science professor at the University of Toronto.) Historian Jon Meacham proposes that what we are really doing is searching for, what he calls, "the soul of America," what makes us tick, and what values we are willing to preserve. But we are exhausted. We are suffering from ESD (Election Stress Disorder) after continuous bombardments of election coverage, wedged in between hourly updates on the gruesome math of an uncontrolled pandemic and an intensifying economic disaster. It is tragically evident that the coronavirus will stick around for the indefinite future. Without congressional assistance, our economy will continue to face unrelenting challenges. Many businesses are unable to stay afloat and are closing, affecting ever growing unemployment and consequential hardships. However, the election will be behind us. This will take significant pressure off our psyche. Although for some of us the light at the end of the tunnel may appear extinguished, for others the nightmare is over. If President Trump is reelected, little may change for a while. If the Democrats pull it out, pundits caution that the current administration will still control 78 days between Nov 3 and Jan 20. Much can happen during that interregnum. In the mean time we should all be able to exhale for a while. Theo Wierdsma