Unconcealing the real truth
The function of Trump’s bombastic candor
Glenn Ellmers, in “How Trump Turns Postmodernist ‘Truth’ Against Itself” (Chronicles, July 2024), maintains that “educated liberals long ago abandoned the idea of permanent standards of truth and morality, derived from God or nature.” For the last fifty years, he maintains, “our elite universities have been promoting the postmodernist ideology that holds truth as entirely subjective, a function of power. Whoever controls the levers of authority sets the ruling ‘narrative.’”
Ellmers further maintains that, when truth is seen as subjective, “the very notion of lying takes on a new meaning. It does not mean—as it did in the old-fashioned or common sense understanding—saying something contrary to the facts. ‘Lying’ instead means opposing the official narrative of the regime.” Accordingly, Trump and MAGA supporters are accused of lying whenever they express opinions that are viewed as illegitimate, because they are contrary to the establishment narrative.
Thus, truth has b…