Good Afternoon Amy,
What is honesty and truth – essay #1?
Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality. Something is ‘true’ if it accurately represents reality.
There is a problem to consider because in the real world nothing is absolute. There is no purely binary way of looking at things. If false is the opposite of true, then a falsehood and a truth are opposite. But a simple example contradicts the binary logic view. The truthful claim ‘this 100° cup of coffee is not hot,’ does not translate to the opposite that ‘this cup of 100° coffee is cold.” Clearly context and clearly defined terms are necessary to establish truth.
Political propaganda exploits a flaw in human thinking to distort and obscure meaning so as to deceive. The false dilemma fallacy is often used in deceive and fool people.
The false dilemma fallacy is a manipulative tool designed to polarize the audience, heroize one side and villainize the other. It is common in political discourse as a way of strong-arming the public into supporting controversial legislation or policies. It is a trick based on the binary choice problem.
The abortion issue is rife with deceptive rhetoric. It provides an excellent example of the false dilemma fallacy in politics. Let’s look at a bit of pro-life propaganda: Those who seek to pass laws restricting abortion say ‘life’ begins at conception, but that is both false and deceptive. It is false because sperm and egg are living prior to conception. It is deceptive because they are equating ‘life’ and ‘person.’ If someone agrees with ‘life begins at conception,’ they might be persuaded that abortion is the taking of a life and thus killing a person. The objective is to control the political discourse by lionizing ‘pro-life’ and demonizing abortion. These “false dilemma” arguments are so effective that people, thus radicalized, can be compelled to terrorist behaviors and even suicide bombing.
The January 6th, 2021 attack on the US Capitol had its roots is an array of falsehoods designed to control people using fear that government is the enemy and Trump is the savior. Driven by the big-lie that the election was stolen, and that Democrats and cowardly Republicans were responsible a mob of radicalized believers, incited by Trump, stormed out Capitol. As with all radicalized terrorists they believed they were heroes and those opposing them were cowards and villains.
These examples show how falsehoods is used to brainwash people and incite, even good people, to deadly terroristic behavior.In order to mitigate future domestic radicalization to mob violence, it is necessary to first answer the original question: What is truth?