TRUTH AND FACTS - "...And that's the way it is."

Here is my own take on the debate...


"...AND THAT'S THE WAY IT IS."


Waldo : (sigh) These kids today...

Me : So can I have the ball, Daddy ?

Waldo : As long as you 2 can play nice.


The essential, to me, is that Waldo sets in philosophy (absolute) what belongs to journalism (relative).

Waldo has no clear idea of truth, nor take on truth, except that he wants to shake yours. I’ve seen him defend "there is no truth", “truth is dead” and "the truth is unattainable", which are philosophically very different postulates. He also defines truth as Facts and Links, thus confusing it with sheer debate. His reason to do that is that the country is rightly obsessed by lies : observing that people endlessly yell at each other for truth, he has decided there was none, like parents will confiscate the ball because they’re tired of seeing the children squabbling for it.

But the ball does belong to one of the children though. It’s just that the parents value peace (a lying peace) more than investigation.

The facts and links provided by the children to claim the possession of the ball cannot be dismissed as being all the same, just because they’re innumerable. There are good and objective reasons to order them hierarchically : some facts are bigger than others, others will oppose lies, others will be made significant by values.

If Facts and Links, these liberal inventions, mean nothing to Waldo, it's because he sees them as a picture by Magritte where the comb is bigger than the bed. It's on this ideology that Kopel made up God Tiny Detail, whom he worships. But the facts in F9/11 are macrocosmic. Add the facts you like, as many facts you like to the larger picture. Let's see how they can alter it. The large picture works whatever the facts you add to it. The regime is corrupt. Money talks louder than human life. Mainstream medias brainwash the populace. Go on, debunk these.

Journalistic truth exists.

Walter Cronkite’s nightly sign-off used to be "and that's the way it is". Not “and that’s the truth, Ruth”. He was acknowledged as the symbol of unbiased journalism, and still, he made no mystery of his opinions (for example, he had seen the space story as one of the most important events of the future). His legacy is of separating reporting from advocacy. Michael Moore is, among others, one of those who carry it. Who cares, then, if I feel before I think (Waldo is right, it has been proven) - as long as I am given the right tools to think and providing I’m willing to use my reason ? Whereas the Lie of the Bush Administration consists in blurring this separation. Significantly, Cronkite recently wrote a preface to 1984, warning against Newspeak.

Facts never claimed to be the truth. They just claim to be reality. Reality is multiple, and of course I order it according to myself, so what ? Why should all these realities be censored instead of put together just because they’re not absolute ?

Of course truth is dead, Bush killed it. But Jesus teaches us that death is not the end, and Lenin, that facts are stubborn, heh heh.

And that’s the way it is.