Time for the inevitable post-Christmas return to the pandemic. And while there was light at the end of the tunnel, it has dimmed somewhat. While this is partly down to the virus itself (i.e. with the emergence of new strains), it is also due to “human” factors. There has been a concatenation of politics and pandemic. And chickens, to change the metaphor from tunnels, have been coming home to roost. All this makes for a discomforting experience.
In the US we have had the outworking of four or five years of the lies and myths perpetrated by the outgoing President, his sycophants and his supporters. The biggest and most recent of the lies was of course that the US presidential election had been stolen from him. That big lie was laid on a carefully prepared foundation consisting of smaller lies repeated for months; that foundation rested on the bedrock of years of more lies about hoaxes, fake media, the perceived crimes of others in the Washington swamp (which is now much swampier) and the claimed manifest failures of his predecessors. Inspired by an almost entirely false narrative, the Donald assembled (in the words of Republican Congress-woman Liz Cheney), then roused a crowd to fever pitch and dispatched it to the Capitol. There then ensued mayhem, violence, death and (limited) destruction. The Capitol, of course, survived. The Congress, although interrupted, discharged its final duty of this presidential election cycle and counted and certified the votes of the electoral college that actually elects the US president and vice president. This act confirmed the truth of the situation: Biden won the election, and it wasn’t even particularly close. So US democracy, while somewhat bruised, also survived. Providence, it seems, has delivered large swathes of US evangelicalism from itself, and Donald Trump will have to slink south to his resort in Florida, probably around the 20th January, the day of the inauguration the he predicted would never happen.
Much of this served to divert attention from what the virus
was up to in the US. Apparently largely unaided by the new, more transmissible variant
that has been afflicting the UK, infections, hospitalisations and deaths from
COVID19 continued to climb; daily new cases of more than 200 000, daily deaths
of the order of 4 000, with rates increasing. The credit that the Trump
administration deserves for playing its role in the rapid development of
vaccines, has been squandered by the spluttering vaccination effort. With the
top of the Federal government apparently paralyzed by Trump’s fixation with the
election steal that never was, the States and local authorities have struggled with
the practicalities of vaccinating a population, a good proportion of which is,
again, in denial. The incoming Biden administration hasn’t sought to minimize
the scale of the tragedy that is unfolding and will begin its struggle shortly.
But the situation is as bad as it is because of lies and denial.
Meanwhile, back here in Blighty, we’ve had a new lockdown to combat our very own new COVID19 variant. Things may now be stabilising
or slightly improving. And vaccination efforts do seem to be proceeding well.
Not without hiccups and a degree of argument of course. But credit where it’s
due, progress is being made. It’s not pandemic lies that are the problem here,
it’s the Brexit lies that are beginning to be revealed for what they were. This
is evidenced by disrupted supply chains, major alterations in the economics of some
type of business, actual (not virtual) barriers to trade, and empty supermarket
shelves, particularly in Northern Ireland. All predictable, all predicted, and all
dismissed as scaremongering. Of course it is claimed by some that these are
just “teething problems”. It is also true that the pandemic has been further
complicating matters. Whisper it softly, the pandemic will probably be blamed
for some of the economic impact that should be laid at the door of Brexit. But the
existence of the new non-tariff checks on goods flowing from GB to NI, forming precisely the type of “border in the Irish sea” that Boris and others claimed
would never exist, has nothing to do with the pandemic.
Truth works a bit like gravity. Gravity can be difficult to describe
and define. In part this is because it is just a given of our existence. We don’t
usually need to give it much thought, and of course, for millennia, no-one did.
It can be easily denied, although none of us really has any reason to deny it.
But it is as easy as saying “gravity doesn’t exist”. If pushed, a gravity
denier could think of situations which appear to provide evidence that it is a
made up thing. After all, don’t aeroplanes rather give the lie to this all-pervading,
all-encompassing force? Except of course, it turns out, that they don’t. Such a
view would be based on ignorance about both gravity and aeroplanes. Ignorance
of course, appears to not be a problem these days, and is positively encouraged by some. Sometimes, deniers resort not to denial, but to confusion and contradiction.
It might seem that whether gravity does or does not exist isn’t
something any of us should get upset about. If I believe it does
exist, and you believe that it doesn’t, then provided you’re not hurting me or
mine what does it matter? The problem with this is that sooner or later it will
matter, and perhaps in a critical situation, like when standing at a precipice,
or at the top of a flight of stairs. Gravity will exert its effects, regardless
of denials. It is a way
things are. There are true and untrue states of affairs;
there is truth and the denial of truth – lies.
One can tell lies for a while, and to some advantage. The
problem is that eventually truth, like gravity, will assert itself. That’s because
it is woven into the fabric of the universe, and indeed the fabric of our minds.
The basic notion of truth in absolute sense has been under attack for a surprising
long time. One of the more obvious manifestations of this attack currently (other
than almost anything Donald Trump claims) is the deconstructionist form of
post-modernism. Truth even if it exists, if expressed in words is unknowable. The
problem is deconstructionists expect their own words to successfully communicate
their meaning of deconstructionism, they expect them to be regarded as true. That is presumably why they seek to
communicate their ideas in dense, indigestible, texts. Either they don’t really
believe their own creed or is it self-defeating. In any case truth, while
perhaps hard to define, and easy to abuse, as a concept continues to be understood
and as a principle continues to operate. We will all find that in the long runs
lies will not work, and they won’t satisfy.
Of course the issue of truth and lies goes to the very heart
of the human condition. It was truth that was under attack in Eden; the apple
was just a means to an end. Paul’s critique in the letter to the Romans is
that humanity “..exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and
served the creature rather than the Creator..” (Romans 1:25). The answer was to
send “truth” in the form of a person - Jesus (John 14:6). Sometime we are happier settling
for the lie, or claiming that it’s all to difficult to work out what truth is.
Even with truth literally standing in front of him, Pilot still asked “What is
truth”? (John 18:38). Almost as pointless as asking “what is gravity” and
trying to live as though it doesn’t apply to you.
