Stop worrying whether the president’s statements conform to ossified standards of truth.
What
is the common denominator of the Obama administration’s serial scandals
— the Justice Department’s spying on AP, the IRS targeting of
conservative groups, the NSA surveillance, the lies about Benghazi and the ACA
— and much of the White House damage-control rhetoric? In a word: the
advancement of postmodern notions of justice at the expense of
traditional truth.
By the 1980s, in law schools, university
social-science departments, and the humanities in general, the old
relativist idea of Plato’s noble lies was given a new French facelift.
Traditional morality and ethics were dismissed as arbitrary constructs,
predicated on privileged notions of race, class, and gender. The new
moral architecture did not rely on archaic abidance by the niceties of
“truth,” which simply reinforced traditional oppressive hierarchies.
Instead,
social justice by definition transcended the sham of traditional ideas
of truth and falsity. The true became the advocacy of fairness, while
the real lie was the reactionary adherence to a set of oppressive norms.
All this was faculty-lounge fluff, but soon it filtered out into the
larger culture.
In this regard, it was understandable that the New York Times
characterized the president’s not telling the truth on over 20
occasions as cases of “misspeaking.” Translated, that means he lied but
his lies were really true: Misspeaking means that Obama was not
sensitive enough to those of us still mired in calcified definitions of
true and false. The privileged still cross t’s and dot i’s; their victims have no such luxury.
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- Judy Chaffee
- This site is the inspiration of a former reporter/photographer for one of New England's largest daily newspapers and for various magazines. The intent is to direct readers to interesting political articles, and we urge you to visit the source sites. Any comments may be noted on site or directed to KarisChaf at gmail.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013
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