The whole truth

There's no excuse for conveniently overlooking anything

In my work covering local government meetings, I have occasion to watch people get sworn in to give testimony with some frequency. I’m also a lifelong student of the way language is employed, and I’ve been thinking about why, after being asked to swear that they would deliver the truth, those raising their right hands also commit to not leaving anything true out of their statements under oath that might be pertinent to the matter at hand, and not mix anything false in with the truth.

The second of these addenda is, of course, about lying, the discovery of which is a fairly straightforward proposition. Witness X says something happened. Some research can reveal that it in fact did not happen, if the statement turns out to be an embellishment.

Whether someone is stating the whole truth is somewhat trickier to determine. How much backstory is necessary to get a full picture of a situation?

We live in an age in which it’s assumed that every news outlet in the world has an agenda. Some couch theirs in noble rhetoric about an informed public being essential to a free and just society. Some are far more blatant about hustling a brand - an ideology or party - and some forthrightly act as cheerleaders for particular public figures.

There are also word-limit restraints, something I also deal with when I wear my local-government reporter hat. To be fair to news outlets that aren’t designed for diving deep, you have to decide what the essence of a story is and make sure that gets presented.

But due to the time and space considerations of that kind of outlet, plus the larger picture of a landscape of outlets with agendas, one doesn’t see much commitment to the whole truth.

And in a summer of rapid and seismic shifts in the national terrain, we’re poorly served by that. That’s true for pretty much all the phenomena currently at work in our society.

Take Black Lives Matter, for instance. A story about that seemingly innocuous slogan being painted on a major thoroughfare in a given US city is easy to spin as a case of people coming together in support of an obvious good. But what routinely gets left out is the origins and platforms, the intention to render the nuclear family obsolete and mainstream unconventional modes of sexuality, of the formal organization that goes by that name.

It’s getting harder to spin BLM “demonstrations” as mere gatherings of concerned citizens with no affiliation tto agenda-driven organizations lately, however. A New York BLM leader saying “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. All right? And I could be speaking ... figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It's a matter of interpretation” kind of lets the cat out of the bag.

Understanding a little background sheds light on recent developments such as BLM activists marching through a residential neighborhood in Seattle, shouting demands that those living there give up their homes, as they really belong to - well that’s not really specified beyond the criterion that they be of a certain race, as well as a riot in Washington, D.C. during which BLM activists would not engage black citizens who support the police in dialogue.

Lest anyone think I don’t see that the Right has its own issues with the whole truth, let’s look into the main subject on which that proves to be true: Trumpism going out of its way to ignore, minimize or discredit conservatives who point out any portion of the ample proof that Donald Trump is a person of low character with no consistent worldview.

The schism between Trumpism and actual conservatism was already underway by October 2016, when the Access Hollywood tape threw an eleventh-hour wrench into the Trump campaign, but that incident made clear the three broad types of reaction - three levels of character? - to Trump’s boorishness. Some Republicans made a clean break with him. Paul Ryan disinvited him from a campaign rally and told Congressional candidates not to feel obligated to associate their campaigns with Trump’s. Some governors and House members rescinded their support. Mike Pence and Mitt Romney expressed disgust, but went on to serve in high positions in the administration. Some, including some evangelical clergy, didn’t bat an eye in continuing to voice enthusiasm.

The source of discomfort felt by those who had the first two reactions was that the tape was merely one example of the whole truth about Trump’s interactions with women. It was during the same year, 2005, that Trump bragged to Howard Stern - and not on a hot mike, but on Stern’s program - about being able to walk into the dressing rooms of contestants in beauty pageants that he owned. It was also around that time that he embarked in affairs with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, while, as we know, his third wife was home with their infant son.

Because of Twitter, we’re well aware of Trump’s penchant for hurling insults, but some recent books and articles have made clear that he has no reservations about insulting the leaders of close ally nations, such as Canada’s Trudeau, Britain’s May, France’s Macron and Germany’s Merkel, to their faces. He also had no qualms about calling a roomful of US generals “dopes and babies.”

Then there is his penchant for spinning conspiracy theories. Obama not being born in Hawaii. Cruz’s dad having a connection to the JFK assassination. Joe Scarborough possibly having murdered the young aide in his Florida Congressional office. Impugning character is just another arrow in his quiver. It’s a perfectly legitimate tactic to him.

Trumpists can only take so much discussion of this before they trot out their list of his accomplishments. The longer versions of the list actually water down the point they’re trying to make with vague or sketchy inclusions. The tightened-up versions admittedly make a case that the needle has moved toward conservative governance in some important ways: judicial appointments, deregulation, pulling out of the Paris climate accord, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem.

The rejoinder to this is twofold: For one thing, we’d have gotten those moves with an actual conservative with some maturity, character and consistency. Also, those moves don’t outweigh the unprecedentedly vulgar life trajectory he has brought to the presidency.

There are some matters currently on the nation’s plate that elude a view of the whole truth at present. The COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, is so fraught with unknowns and slippery data that we can’t make hard and fast pronouncements about which model for going back to school is the safest, or the necessity (or lack thereof) for masks. Because of that uncertainty, and because the actions involved elicit such strong reactions, we get people peddling exotic theories from the inside linings of their proverbial trench coats, whispering to the gullible, “Pssst! Here’s the only source with the inside skinny on what’s really happening.”

The current post office controversy is another situation in which we need to proceed carefully before drawing final conclusions. The service has been in sketchy financial condition for a long time, and its personnel has been under strain. Still, the fact that current Postmaster General DeJoy has been a major Republican - specifically, Trump Victory Fund - donor whose logistics company has been a Postal Service contractor, and that DeJoy has abruptly shaken the organization up, and that it has reduced the number of sorting machines quite recently, and that Trump’s tweets of late have been about how the upcoming election is certain to be riddled with fraud, a certain kind of picture looks fairly probable.

When we do know the whole picture, though, we’re not only remiss but deceptive if we don’t put all the facts on the table.

It’s not comfortable to do so, because it forces one to come to the realization that either Leftism or Trumpism will make our present juncture worse, and, from a political standpoint, they are the only teams on the field.

One might, in a moment of panic over such a realization, conclude that one is morally obligated to pick a side and publicly root for it.

But to do so is going to require glossing over some portion of the whole truth. Is that acceptable?