EDITORIAL

Dates have different meanings to different people. The sixth of January 2024 is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Earl Scruggs, the man who reinvented the banjo and, with help from his musical friends, created modern bluegrass music.

But most of us are, perhaps strangely, more concerned with the riot at the Capitol in 2021, an event that actually changed nothing whatsoever. In a hundred years, any importance we now attach to it will be considered inexplicable. Much sooner, a generation will graduate from college that neither remembers it nor cares.

But was it important? What’s the actual truth of the matter?

God only knows, and He ain’t telling.

I’ll grant that there is only one actual, complete, literal truth. I’m also quite certain that not one of us knows it. We can’t.

Most of us get our news from outlets like CNN, the BBC, Al Jazeera, Deutsche-Welle, and so on, each of which have their own biases. Take any one story and check the versions against each other and you’ll find they never add up. One channel will tell you that a given shooting was accidental, another that it was a drive-by, a third that it was at a backyard barbecue, and a fourth that a pregnant mother is in critical condition. The actual story may involve gangs and drugs, or it might be two jealous girlfriends battling over their worthless guy, and we’ll never find out the truth because, by the time it’s all sorted out, there’s something new on.

But even accounting for that, all we’re getting is a story — a narrative, a listing of facts in an order that implies cause and effect, a version of what happened that makes a sort of sense. I’ve lived through a couple of dozen major events, and none of them made much sense at the time. In fact, the closer I was to ground zero, the less sense it made.

And that’s with ongoing events. Move on a few hours and people’s recollections change; go a few days ahead and you can hear a perfectly honest eyewitness give a totally different report of what happened, one that’s almost unrecognizable compared to their first statement. Perhaps worse are the people who recite the same listing of facts every time in the same exact order: They’re as often wrong as not, because what they did was make sense of things in their head before they first reported, and that means that, inextricable with their testimony, there’s an internal narrative intertwined with whatever they’re saying.

Fact is, events often don’t follow simple cause-and-effect. Eyewitnesses get it wrong. Cameras film only one angle.

The above document is a perfect example. It’s not a statement of absolute truth, nor is it intended to be. It’s a criminal accusation constructed for a purpose, which is to gain a conviction. It bears a resemblance to the truth, but it’s only a single perspective, and the facts are always cherry-picked to support that version of the story. A prosecutor who fails to do this is not doing their job. (The honest ones think of it as “vetting unreliable sources”, but the more cynical call it what it is.)

The truth is an ideal we can never reach, and to suggest that most of America has all the facts is either disingenuous or inane, take your pick.

But perhaps more salient a point is this: No matter what the truth is, nearly everyone will choose whatever version of it best suits them and defend it rabidly against all comers.

Tell me honestly: When I said of the document pictured that it’s not absolute truth, you reacted either in support of it or against it, right?

Congratulations. You’re normal, you poor pitiful deluded schmuck.

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On second thought, maybe don’t. Send it to a TV preacher instead, or worse to a candidate for office so they can drown us further in those awful political ads. God knows what we need is more mindless indoctrination in this country. It’s like Communist China without the death camps.

Screw it. I’m gonna go listen to some bluegrass.