Thrasymachus and the Truth

In grade school, every American child learns that George Washington never lied. Not once in his entire life. The story was written years after Washington died, when no one was alive who knew if he had or did not have a lifelong reputation for veracity, and the author provided no sources for his report, and no sources have been found in more than a century of searching. So it appears the life without a single lie was a posthumous gift to Washington.

Today, things go the opposite way. Thrasymachus came up with a definition of 'Justice' as whatever the strongest power says it is. Socrates found inconsistencies in that definition, and so ruled it out. But Socrates (though he didn't know the term) was looking for a prescriptive definition of justice, one that satisfies some theoretical demands (e.g., absolutely consistency). Thrasymachus (though he didn't know the term) was giving a descriptive definition.

As the most powerful person on earth, the US president can not only define what justice means, but also what is true, so, for the US president, TRUTH is as Thrasymachus would have described it if he'd thought of it.

So, when President Johnson said he hated war, that he did not want to go to war, but the North Vietnamese had attacked, without any provocation, a US Navy ship in International Waters, and this was as bad as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, every American newspaper confirmed that what Johnson said was true, and the US had no choice but to go to war against North Vietnam.

After Johnson died, newspapers reported that, in fact, the well documented attack by the North Vietnamese had never happened.

When Bush, jr said he did not want to go to war in Iraq, but Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction, including a nearly complete nuclear arsenal, all the Western newspapers agreed that their reporters had confirmed the existence of the WMD, including a nuclear arsenal. This was NOT like the faked attack on a US Navy ship by the North Vietnamese, and it would be a horrible mistake to blame Bush, jr for Johnson's lies, a mistake that would lead to an inevitable nuclear attack on the US.

But after Bush, jr left office and was no longer President of the US, most newspapers reported that the nuclear arsenal, the existence of which they reported had been irrefutably proven, never existed. (There are still some Bush, jr supporters who said the US military found those missiles, with nuclear warheads and fuses lit, and they managed to snuff the fuses just in the nick of time, but this information was classified so as not to frighten the American people, and Bush, jr was telling the TRUTH. But where the believers in the nukes were a large majority of Americans while Bush, jr was President of the US, now they are a small minority of Americans.)

Today, when Seymore Hersh wrote that President Obama was less than truthful about Osama, the Libyan Ambassador's death, and Syria, every Western newspaper condemned him as a racist, tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy theorist. Hersh's impressive credentials and the fact that the official White House releases suffer from internal and external inconsistencies do not matter. President Obama is the President of the United States, so whatever he says is TRUE, by the Thrasymachus definition of TRUTH. Proof and evidence notwithstanding, whatever President Obama says is the absolute TRUTH.

How long that TRUTH will last after Obama is no longer president remains to be seen.