Anti Trump Posters Make America Think Again

Soon later Donald Trump was elected, CNN released a powerful new 'Facts First' advertising Campaign serial featuring an onscreen image of an apple tree with a voiceover narrating the post-obit words:

This is an apple. Some people might try to tell y'all that it's a banana. They might scream, 'Banana, banana, banana' over and over once again. They might put banana in all caps. Yous might even start to believe it's a banana, but information technology's not. This is an apple tree.

The attempt by CNN and others to reinstate the definition of truth as a office of objective reality is praiseworthy. Simply the 'facts first' strategy, while admirable, does not accost the origins of the campaign against facts and reason, which started, not with the inauguration of Donald Trump, merely with an intellectual move that began in Europe long before Donald Trump's grandfather Frederick Trump was operating brothels in British Columbia.

Brand America Think Over again

Every nation was created by either an accident of state of war, tribal assertions, or arbitrary geographic lines drawn past colonial powers. The merely exception to this is the Usa of America.

The Us was built around a range of ideas with 'reason' as its primary source of authorisation. Information technology was the commencement nation-state to give course to the enlightenment ideals of liberty, ramble authorities, natural police, and separation of church and state.

Objectivity became the standard of appraisal and armed with an 'impartial' and predictable form of justice, America prospered both economically and socially. The organisation 'worked' considering it was grounded in a definition of truth and reality that existed independently of human being perception.

But of course, men are not objective and nature must exist mitigated by compassionate policy.  'Survival of the fittest' only works if your standard of value is strength and intellect. Just what about the heart and soul?

Reason vs. Romanticism

The sterility of reason and intellect proved soul-killing and inevitably yielded to another human reflex- emotion. This led to a counter-motion known as Romanticism.   Unlike reason which gave precedence to intellect and logic, Romanticism elevated man'southward emotions, granting it the status of absolute truth. Perception became reality, and facts became 'subject to interpretation.'

The Age for Irrationality

Romanticism as a philosophical movement started in Germany in the late xviii^th century and it emphasized emotional awareness as a pre-requisite to the betterment of society.

While the Enlightenment stressed that the universe was run past stock-still laws and that reality was something nosotros were encouraged to observe and master,  the Romantics saw reality as a social construction. An apple is an apple or it can be a banana if we all collectively decide that, information technology is 'in fact' -a banana.

The universe according to the philosophy of the romantics is a single interconnected whole (we are all 1). Reason and rationality, the Romantics might argue caters to a highly specialized psychological contour (the rugged individualist) and encourages the disintegration of social units. Information technology is sterile and objective and devoid of compassion.

Romanticism, on the other hand,  with its emphasis on emotion, was actually very romantic. Information technology was a view of being that was more than interested in the reality that transcended fourth dimension and space. Romanticism was mysticism without the institution of organized religion. It appealed to our spiritual impulses in a mode that the age of reason did not.

But in the realm of politics, Romanticism was anything just romantic. Information technology led to the deadening erosion of our founding principles. Objectivity was replaced with collective subjectivity, reason with pragmatism, Private rights with identity politics, and truth with consensus.

Past rebelling against reason and rationality, Romanticism helped usher in ii of the deadliest forms of political tyranny known to modern homo- Nazism and Communism. Both political theories were essentially outgrowths of the philosophy of Romanticism.

Perception is not Reality

One time our understanding of truth became a subjective social construction, and so whoever (as in the case of an aspiring demagogue) or whatever (as in the case of social media or the establishment),  crafts the narrative tin can control the 'truth' and by extension our perceptions of reality.

Now that we have accepted the notion of truth every bit relative or a matter of human perception, we need not wonder how or why we got hither. We demand only ask, on what basis tin we possibly launch a resistance against those who tell u.s. that apples are bananas?

On what ground can we protest confronting the bizarre universe of alternative facts later on we accept disarmed ourselves of the virtually important weapon we have against tyranny- reason.

Without a clear definition of truth and reality, objective laws and individual rights cannot be preserved. When reason no longer rules and the rules are no longer guided by sacred principles we are left with just one of two ways to move frontward; either through political pull or button: Otherwise known every bit pressure group politics or brute force.

And that'south the truth.

Or is it?

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Source: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/themuslimmonad/2020/08/make-america-think-again/

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