Is There Something Even Worse for Democracy Than Lies?
Is There Something Even Worse for Democracy Than Lies?
What Happens When We Really Don’t Know What We Think We Know?
When We Lose This, Democracy Pays a Very High Price
We have covered the concept of truth and its criticality for sustaining democracy. We have covered what happens when a society begins to accept lies from its leaders as “the new normal” and how that can lead to democracy’s demise, being replaced with authoritarianism. But as bad as lying is in terms of devaluing truth which is the “currency” on which democracy depends, there is something even worse that our leaders can do to demolish democracy.
What is it, and what do we need to learn to prevent it?
Becoming “Political Epistemologists”
University of Connecticut Professor of Philosophy Michael Patrick Lynch, in his essay “The Value of Truth” published in the Boston Review, underscores the importance of truth for a democracy.[1] According to Lynch, “In the jargon of academia, the study of what we can know, and how we know it, is called ‘epistemology’…”[2]
Lynch describes our current epistemological chaos this way:
“When millions of voters believe, despite all evidence, that the election was stolen, that vaccines are dangerous, and that a cabal of child predators rule the world from a pizza parlor’s basement, it becomes clear that we cannot afford to ignore how knowledge is formed and distorted. We are living an epistemological crisis…In a real sense we must all become epistemologists now- specifically a kind of epistemology that grapples with the challenges of the political world, a political epistemology…”[3] (emphasis mine)
So yes, Lynch is making this key point- we must understand what we know as American citizens and how we know it. But he’s also saying that as a part of Americans developing their “political epistemology expertise”, we must acknowledge and prioritize what Lynch says about truth’s relationship to democracy:
“Democracies are especially vulnerable to such threats because in needing deliberative participation of their citizens, they must place a special value on truth. By this I don’t mean…that democracies should try to get everyone to believe the same things. That’s not even possible, let alone democratic. Rather, democracies must place special value on those institutions and practices that help us to reliably pursue the truth- to acquire knowledge as opposed to lies, fact rather than propaganda. The epistemic threats to democracy are threats to that value and those institutions.”[4] (emphasis mine)
From Lack of Truth to the Next Step- Knowledge Polarization
Without this truth Lynch refers to, we pour fuel on the “truth wildfire” that threatens to disintegrate our democracy which Lynch calls “knowledge polarization”. Lynch defines this term as polarization “… over who knows- which experts to trust, and what is rational and what isn’t.”[5] It has become embedded in our political landscape where “…we disagree not just over values (which is a healthy democracy), and not just over facts (which is inevitable), but over our very standards for determining what the facts are…”[6]
Knowledge polarization is deepened when “epistemic spillovers” occur. Lynch describes research that suggests an “epistemic spillover” happens “…when political convictions influence how much we are willing to trust someone’s expertise on things that are unrelated to politics”.[7] As Lynch explains it, this toxic combination of political convictions mixed with mistrust causes Democrats to more likely trust Democratic doctors, Democratic plumbers, and so on. The same thing goes for Republicans.[8] Lynch goes on to explain the consequences of this:
“This and similar studies suggest that ideological politics and knowledge polarization feed each other in a feedback loop of mistrust. If you think that Democrats are brainwashed slaves of the Liberal Media, you aren’t going to trust their supposed expertise when they tell you that there is a pandemic, or that the Earth is warming, or that the election was fair. Indeed, mistrust on both sides of the political spectrum encourages mutual skepticism…This skepticism can prevent people from following the evidence to life-saving conclusions and thus refuse to wear masks or socially distance.”[9] (emphasis mine)
From Knowledge Polarization to Skepticism to “Digging In”
Not only will knowledge polarization lead to skeptical mistrust that causes us to dismiss experts whose advice may mean life or death for us (example- as in a pandemic), but skeptical mistrust can cause us to “dig in”. Lynch points out that while ancient Greek pyrrhonists believed that skepticism was healthy “…because it would make one, more, well skeptical- that is, less likely to believe stupid stuff. But the sad history of humanity suggests they we are way too optimistic: knowledge polarization seems to make people more confident in their opinion rather than less...”[10]
Arrogance- The Poisonous “Fruit” of Entrenchment
Lynch says that this entrenchment as to what to believe as true and from whom to believe as telling the truth, can be attributed to the Dunning-Krueger effect (believing we know something factually that in fact, we really don’t know) which can help form our individual civic awareness and discernment. But, Lynch goes a step further. The skeptical mistrust that knowledge polarization engenders is more than prone to overestimate one’s own knowledge. It breeds arrogance, which is far more than “misplaced overconfidence” in oneself.[11] As Lynch tells it:
“Arrogance engenders entitlement, and entitlement in turn breeds resentment- forming the poisonous psychological soil for extremism (emphasis mine). And, most importantly, it can be easily encouraged…arrogance is at root founded on insecurity- on the fear of real or imaginary threats, be they from Satan-worshiping child sex-traffickers or Jewish lasers from outer space.”[12]
Lynch, citing the work of philosopher Alessandra Tanesini, describes arrogance not as simply misplaced overconfidence, but “it is a confusion of truth with ego”. Lynch goes on to say that the idea of arrogance as “bad news, both personally and psychologically, isn’t new…But the real political problem is not arrogant individuals, per se, but arrogant ideologies.
These are ideologies built around a central conviction that “we” know (the secret truths, the real nature of reality) and “they” don’t…”[13] This arrogance, skepticism, and mistrust cannot only prevent us from seeing truth or not wanting to see it, but it can lead to outcomes that have real life or death consequences. As Lynch explains:
“…when people mistrust institutional expertise for political reasons-whether that’s about vaccines or climate change- they will not value the research guided by such expertise. And that in turn erodes the democratic value of truth-seeking- for example by funding federal institutions- which for all its failings, is meant to help us figure out what to believe and how to act, including in the voting booth.”[14](emphasis mine)
Absolutely, we Americans are in dire need of a crash course in “political epistemology”, learning to discern truth so we can protect it. There is a reason why we need to do this now instead of later as we shall now see.
The High Price of the Ultimate Democracy “Devaluation”- Loss of Trust
The impact of this epidemic of “non-truth telling” is described by The Aspen Institute:
“There is a crisis of trust in American democracy. By virtually every measure, Americans’ trust in most of their democratic institutions, especially the media, has declined dramatically over the past half century. A country that provides universal education, proclaims press freedom, and enjoys the legacy of one of the oldest representative governments in the world is nevertheless having great difficulty understanding and supporting its democracy.”[15] (emphasis mine)
This is a broad and serious indictment of our democracy as it stands today. Plain and simple, democracy without a broad consensus by the governed as to the government’s legitimacy based on trust cannot sustain itself indefinitely by doing what Moynihan called “defining deviancy down”, i.e., leaders telling outright lies and that we not only accept it, but we have grow accustomed to is being normal. The condition today of United States’ democracy is one in which its “currency of truth” has been significantly devalued by this loss of trust. The result of this “devaluation”? Levitsky and Ziblatt answer that question:
“For our political system… the consequences of his (Trump’s) dishonesty are devastating. Citizens have a basic right to information in a democracy. Without credible information about what our elected leaders do, we cannot effectively exercise our right to vote. When the president of the United States lies to the public, our access to credible information is jeopardized and trust in government is eroded (how could it not be?). When citizens do not believe their elected leaders, the foundations of representative democracy weaken. The value of elections is diminished when citizens have no faith in the leaders they elect.”[16] (emphasis mine)
Levitsky and Ziblatt wrote those words in 2019, midway through the Trump presidency. By 2020, it had only worsened as Trump’s lies increased in velocity, number, and intensity in a pandemic that had taken by that time the lives of over 800,000 Americans. Of those who had died by that time in the pandemic, 400,000 of them, in the opinion of Trump’s former coronavirus response coordinator, could have been “…mitigated or decreased substantially.”[17] Quite a testimony to the life and death consequences of a lack of truth telling and loss of trust at the highest level of our government.
“Prisoners of Bamboozlement”
If truth from our government’s leadership is a corner stone of our democracy and is required to build citizens’ trust in their government, why do we Americans not demand it? Why do we not cry out in outrage as a nation when we do not receive it? While tough questions, they are fair and legitimate. Although there may be multiple answers to them, perhaps the bottom-line answer is that we do not receive truth from many of our leaders because we do not expect truth. Going even further, we do not demand truth.
However, there is another darker reason why we do not always receive the truth from our leaders. It is the reason why that with some leaders, we never receive the truth, and likely never will. The problem is us. As the late Carl Sagan explained in his book The Demon-Haunted World:
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”[18] (emphasis mine)
Sadly, too often we Americans, once we realize we have been “bamboozled” (i.e., lied to), are no longer interested in the truth. We refuse to come to grips with the reality that we have been intellectually and emotionally “swindled”. We fail to acknowledge that we “have been had”, because it is too psychologically painful for us to admit it to ourselves, and it diminishes our own self-image. By seeing the leader’s lie, we must admit we have been fooled, which makes us feel like a fool. Yet, we must reject this trap, as it only empowers the liar. Often, in lieu of rejecting the liar’s trap, we simply ignore the leader’s lie and tolerate it. But, if we do not acknowledge the lie (or lies), we can never escape from the web of lies the leader or leaders have woven for us.
We Won’t Get Fooled Again? (Maybe, and Apologies to Pete Townsend of The Who)
Not only must we be teaching that, as citizens, we have a right to receive truth from our government (at all levels), but that we should expect it. We must teach that we cannot allow ourselves to be “captured” by the bamboozle, as Sagan puts it. We are entitled to the truth. We expect full truth, not partial truth, or being told the truth only when it is convenient or expedient. Our leaders should feel an ethical obligation to transact their leadership only in the “currency of truth”. They should know that there is no option except to tell the truth and if they do not, their tenure in office will be brief. There is an old maxim that says: “you get what you expect”. If we expect lies, coverups, distortions, exaggeration, and the sort, that is all we will get. Today we have lowered the “truth bar”. We have devalued democracy’s “currency”. We must restore and revalue our democratic currency by raising that bar to where it should have been all along, to the standard of truth and truth only.
That “currency” (of trust) gets deposited in every American’s “trust bank” every day based on our perceptions of and encounters with the decisions and actions of our various government branches and agencies and their leaders. Other times those actions and decisions cause a “withdrawal” of trust. Trust is like a bank. It takes a long time to build up deposits (of trust), but “withdrawals” can happen quickly. In a democracy, citizens’ “trust bank” must be kept healthy with regular “trust deposits” or the government, and thus its citizens, suffer for it.
Truth telling and having leaders and a government we can trust must be something all Americans understand is a fundamental expectation of their government which they are entitled to. If we want democracy, it is our right as citizens to have truth. We must expect truth from our leaders. We must expect decisions we can trust because we expect our leaders to be trustworthy. If they are not, we must replace them as soon as election cycle allows. Truth and trust, all Americans must be taught (with constant reinforcement), are two very closely related and interdependent cornerstones of our democracy. Each affects the other.
Guarding the Democracy’s Fragile Treasure of Truth
The Aspen Institute puts it well when they argue the fragility of and the centrality of trust to sustaining democracy, saying:
· “Trust is a critical element in the functioning of democracies, but it must be balanced: too little trust in government leads to political dysfunctional, but too much trust can lead to autocracies.
· Citizens need not agree with every government action or trust each individual officeholder. At a minimum, citizens must trust that the democratic political process will protect the national interest, act responsibly and uphold the rule of law.
· Holding those in power accountable is a critical element of a democratic republic. Another vital element is communication between the government and the citizenry. Therefore, freedom of the press protected by the Constitution, is elemental to self-governance.”[19]
Indeed, truth is so invaluable to our democracy that perhaps that is why Mark Twain said:
“Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it”.[20]
If something is valuable, one guards it. One treasures it and takes measures to prevent it from being stolen. Guarding the “treasure of truth” is not a one-time event, it is an on-going process requiring constant vigilance. Since the 2020 election some courageous elected officials have chosen truth over lies, but many have not. However, ultimately that role falls on all of us- We the People.[21] Restoring truth and trust in our democracy begins with us. It begins with us teaching that normative American democracy centers on expecting and demanding truth, as well as holding our leaders accountable for communicating in truth. Our civic literacy must be built around it.
Without this currency of truth, trust evaporates, and our democracy becomes so morally and ethically bankrupt that it crumbles because it no longer rests on a foundation of truth. In fact, it rests on no foundation at all which allows authoritarianism to come in and fill that vacuum. That is why the new, reconstructed U.S. civics education needs to be built around trust and its close relative, truth.
Democracy is so important. But it’s hard to keep, and it’s easy to lose. It’s up to us, and only us, to protect it.
Stay tuned…we will continue exploring topics that are not given near enough time and emphasis in our civic education efforts, if they are even taught at all.
[1] “The Value of Truth”, by Michael Patrick Lynch, Boston Review, March 1, 2021, www.bostonreview.net/philocophy-religion/michael-patrick-lynch-value-truth
[2] “The Value of Truth”, by Michael Patrick Lynch, Boston Review, March 1, 2021, Ibid
[3] “The Value of Truth”, by Michael Patrick Lynch, Boston Review, March 1, 2021, Ibid
[4] “The Value of Truth”, by Michael Patrick Lynch, Boston Review, March 1, 2021, Ibid
[5] “The Value of Truth”, by Michael Patrick Lynch, Boston Review, March 1, 2021, Ibid
[6] “The Value of Truth”, by Michael Patrick Lynch, Boston Review, March 1, 2021, Ibid
[7] “The Value of Truth”, by Michael Patrick Lynch, Boston Review, March 1, 2021, Ibid
[8] “The Value of Truth”, by Michael Patrick Lynch, Boston Review, March 1, 2021, Ibid
[9] “The Value of Truth”, by Michael Patrick Lynch, Boston Review, March 1, 2021, Ibid
[10] “The Value of Truth”, by Michael Patrick Lynch, Boston Review, March 1, 2021, Ibid
[11] “The Value of Truth”, by Michael Patrick Lynch, Boston Review, March 1, 2021, Ibid
[12] “The Value of Truth”, by Michael Patrick Lynch, Boston Review, March 1, 2021, Ibid
[13] “The Value of Truth”, by Michael Patrick Lynch, Boston Review, March 1, 2021, Ibid
[14] The Value of Truth”, by Michael Patrick Lynch, Boston Review, March 1, 2021, Ibid
[15] The Report of the Knight Commission on Trust, Media, and Democracy, Executive Summary, from Crisis in Democracy: Renewing Trust in America, Copyright 2019, The Aspen Institute, https://cspreports.aspeninstitute.org/Knight-Commission-TMD/2019/report/details/0287/Knight-Commission
[16] How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Copyright 2019, pg. 198, Ibid
[17] “Birx Recalls ‘Very Difficult’ Call With Trump, Says Hundreds of Thousands of Covid Deaths Were Preventable”, by Allan Smith, NBC News, March 28, 2021, 5:00 PM, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/birx-recalls-very-difficult-call-with-trump-says-hundreds-of-thousands-of-covid-deaths-were-preventable/arBB1f3lnn?ocid+msnedgntp
[18] The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan, Carlsagan.com
[19] The Report of the Knight Commission on Trust, Media, and Democracy, Executive Summary, from Crisis in Democracy: Renewing Trust In America, Copyright 2019, The Aspen Institute, Ibid
[20] Directory of Mark Twain’s Maxims, Quotations, and Various Opinions, Ibid
[21] “Trump Claims Arizona Election Database Deleted, Republican Calls Him ‘Unhinged”, by The Associated Press, May 16, 2021, 9:32 AM, https://www.al.com/news/2021/05/trump-claims-arizona-election-database-deleted-repuiblican-calls-him-unhinged.html