A World of Facts...

Imagine a world of facts where everything is pinned down, more or less, at least for a time...Imagine facts that add to our knowledge, that make our words have backing, substance, facts that help describe and explain our complex interactions, facts that illuminate and advance our sense of reality, facts that situate us within a world and give us some sense of a base camp, as on a mountain that is really there, that cannot simply be wished away...Imagine the physicality of facts that perception confirms, the externality of facts that take us outside ourselves. Imagine the higher plane of facts in which ideas reside. Imagine psychological facts and mental states and moral claims as all having their factual basis. Imagine facts that get written down and recorded for posterity, facts that make their mark upon us from having lived through this ordeal - that cannot be denied, let alone forgotten, facts that are known, felt, grasped, remembered, ruminated upon, facts that give hope, that make it a pleasure to observe, to analyze, to connect the dots, that rescue us from all manner of delusion and magical thinking, facts that help overcome superstition and group-think, facts that distinguish historical figures from mythical ones, facts that uncover heroic deeds from the past, facts that document adversity and hardship, facts that examine the crimes and follies of the powerful, facts that help establish which ancient reptilian creatures (i.e. dinosaurs) did in fact exist thousands of years ago...  Imagine facts in contrast to wishful-thinking... Imagine facts in contrast to lies and distortions and cover-ups...Imagine facts as protection against big lies and manipulation from the powers that be... Imagine a common language where people agree upon facts and the methodology for arriving at facts... Imagine a world of scientific facts, buttressed by experiment and constant re-assessment... Imagine a public discourse that sought out a shared inventory of facts... Imagine conversation and debate about what actually happened or is happening now... Imagine flawed moral agents having to back up their truth-claims with sources (!) [What a concept....] Imagine a world full of fact-checkers - also known as journalists... Imagine editors - people paid to second-guess those journalists... Imagine detectives, tax accountants, physicists, auto mechanics,  botanists, zoologists, plumbers, engineers, electricians, psychologists,  and general observers all of whom are interested in facts (!) ... Imagine a means of communicating what the facts are and for seeking greater clarity on these very facts...(Such and such happened on this day at this hour...So and so made this statement to the police, but told his lawyer something else three hours later...Country X had these dealings with Country Y...A war broke out...A treaty was signed.... The election outcome was swayed by outside interference... This couple got married....This other person was born...Someone else died...An earthquake struck....A drought continued in California...Grapefruit sales skyrocketed in June... The CEO was convicted of money-laundering....A famous celebrity had to delete their Twitter account for make statements that were not factually correct... Facts....jolly facts.... )  Imagine consequences for those who try to ignore the facts...Imagine penalties for obfuscators, dissemblers and prevaricators... Imagine public derision directed at liars....Imagine prison sentences for perjurers...Imagine laws against fraud and misrepresentation... Imagine outrage at claims about products  (cancer-cures and the like) that turn out to be false (!) ... Imagine a dear leader, a grand old party, a ruling clique who seem indifferent to facts, who prefer bromides, sloganeering and advertising techniques... Imagine a carnival barker, a huckster, an aging, ego-driven, fickle force-of-nature,  a decided non-expert on all matters relating to economics and foreign policy - pooh-poohing all of the so-called facts...Imagine someone wishing away vast portions of reality, leaving the rest of us envious or dumbfounded...Imagine a guy who changes his facts in mid-sentence or while maintaining the same stance in the same news conference or who adds non-facts to counter-balance half-truths... Imagine a thinker who mistakes "night" for "day" - who conflates "friend" and "foe" - who declares "fake" as whatever is not to his liking... Imagine a political base that is bruised, battered, jaded, incensed, agitated, numbed up, sweet-talked, cajoled, spun-around, checked-out to the point of paranoia... Imagine people chanting "lock her up" instead of "find the facts"... Imagine mind-numbing ad-hominem attacks and boiler-plate rhetoric at endless rallies concocted to pile on and double down on any and all suspected enemies of Dear Leader....Imagine the Orwellian hate-fest du jour... Imagine getting used to a side-show of obvious bread-and-circus tactics...Imagine falling prey to the latest ground-swell of "stick it to" the other side... Imagine it being more important to silence the opposition than to be a good referee ... Imagine truth and objectivity fading from memory... Imagine facts being replaced by moral-grandstanding and over-confidence.... Imagine everything being resolved by whomever looks and sounds more headstrong, obstinate, tunnel-blind and outraged on a given day.... Imagine the puppeteers and their consultants going back to their focus groups and testing, testing once again what presses our hot buttons...Imagine curiosity no longer being fostered...Imagine children who live in virtual fantasy worlds because nothing strikes them as real enough to hold onto, including their families, their peers, their communities.... Imagine adults who cling to adolescence because reality just can't compare with the endless escapist role-playing and dramatizing that have become our new respites from the daily headlines... Imagine the fake media fading from view into the fake expanse of the hologram of the deep state...Imagine everything up for grabs on a day when the trolls laugh in your face because you dared to ask, to assert, to refer to something you knew be factual... Imagine yourself as without ties or allegiances stronger than your devotion to the objective truth - letting the chips fall where they may... Imagine yourself giving a million excuses, saying but that would sound pompous or pretentious if I dared to let my own thoughts be known... Imagine that you yourself have that unsteady vertigo feeling that goes way beyond one person or one administration...Imagine that what you have felt or are currently feeling is in fact the essential key to the problem - and that you are onto something really really big and tremendous and magnificent - no matter how awful or awe-inspiring or immense it may seem if only we had power to absorb it, to try to say it and not (for just this once) to run away... Ask yourself whether you too have been sold a bill of goods by living through this mess and doing nothing or whether this hunger, this curiosity, this everyday care and concern for the stuff that surrounds you, for everyone and everything, this insatiable need to know is not in fact the thing that destroys you, but the thing that keeps you sane...