What if Facts Were True?

 
From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

So, it happens that a Trump surrogate made an interesting statement regarding “facts”–they don’t matter anymore. Things are true if people believe in them. So, maybe Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim–who knows? Maybe aspirin is a good birth control pill. Maybe climate change can be dumb because your dumb face, right?

Of course this is an appalling thing to say. There needs to be common ground for people to be able to get together and discuss their wants and needs. If facts–the concrete understandings that are the underpinning for our shared reality–don’t matter, then how can we ever deal with the subjective responses people have in reaction to those facts? It seems like a casual way of dismissing groups one doesn’t want to listen to–“I reject your reality and replace it with my own.”

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