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Politics

大行其道的感实性

Sep 15, 2016 Lucy P. Marcus

发自伦敦——美国已故参议员丹尼尔·帕特里克·莫伊尼汉（Daniel Patrick Moynihan）曾说过一句名言：“每个人都构建自身观点的权利，却无权去捏造自己所认为的事实。”这句话有其道理，但无论有权与否，政治家和选民们依旧在各自构建属于自己的替代性现实——并产生了深远的后果。

如今人们越来越难以在政治上（以及商业及体育领域）维护事实与真相。它们被美国喜剧演员斯蒂芬·科尔伯特（Stephen Colbert）所谓的“感实性”所替代：将直觉感受或观点的表达视为事实的有效呈现。而今年则有可能是感实性不断涌现的其中一个高峰。

为了做出正确的决定，选民需要对可靠的事实——涵盖从经济数据到恐怖主义活动分析的一系列透明且不带偏见的参数——进行评估。但今时今日，那些媒体名嘴们更喜欢去攻击这些领域的专家学者们。而那些雄心勃勃的政治人物——从英国脱欧公投的领袖到美国共和党总统候选人唐纳·德特朗普（Donald Trump）——则不约而同地选择去忽视事实。

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 16 Comments on this article

tim williams Oct 1, 2016

Project Syndicate needs to understand that it is i n the griip of its own post-truth ideology. This author inevitably raises the canard that Brexit won because of its superior lie telling capacity. The anti democratic contempt for British people behind this notion is breathetaking as is a lack of perspective about the political proces - which includes politiciansd on all sides exaggerating while the elctorate works out who is telling the truth. In terms of Brexit thre author forgets that the British Establishment lied about the immediate impact of a vote for Brexit - a crisis of the economy and joblessness when in fact there has been a boom in thre FTSE and a continued growth in employment. Maturely understood, the Brexit vote shows that 'ordinary people' without university degrees, can be a whole lot cleverer than intellectuals or Project Synidicate authors. A period of humility from Project Sydnicate on the European question would be welcome as would some sign that you are excited by democracy of the kind we have just been thru in the UK. Isn't it marvellous that ordinary people can be bullied and lied to by the intellectuals and the Establishment and still resist the pressure to conform? I'd like to hear more celebration of democracy in the UK on this site.
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Akhter Iqbal Khan Sep 27, 2016

uk has the habit leaving its friends in the lurch. the same happened in 1931 when it escaped from the gold standard in order to escape great depression. uk cannot take it anymore. the immigration crisis, greece bailouts and european stand agaisnt russia
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M M Sep 20, 2016

It is Politics......
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Michael Woolgar Sep 19, 2016

Dear Marcus,
The misleading statements of some Brexit suporters were as nothing compared to the government's propaganda:
1. 100,000 jobs to be lost on Brexit
2. All families to be £4,300 worse off under Brexit
3. Short term recession predicted
4. 3 mln jobs are EU-related and are at risk
5. Brexit would be followed by an emergency budget to raise taxes and cut spending
6. Brexit increases the chance of a European war
7. National security against terrorism at risk if we leave
8. Better remain in a reformed EU
9. Cameron’s 4 point deal with Brussels is legally binding
10. the future of low-cost plane tickets or mobile phone roaming charges for tourists are in doubt
11. the government would be powerless to stand up for Britain’s interests and look after our economy in the event of a Leave vote
12. UK pensioners living in Spain, will lose their reciprocal health cover
13. The hit to the economy could be greater than that from the Great Recession
14. Mortgages would be harder to get and more expensive – David Cameron and George Osborne
15. Because the pound would be worth less, everything we import would become more expensive, increasing inflation and hurting family budgets – Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne
16. EU subsidies to farmers and universities will be lost if we exit the EU, Cameron
17. that best-selling children’s books would no longer be written because no non-British authors or illustrators would be allowed into the UK if we were not part of the EU
18. Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, has claimed that British expats living in Europe would risk “becoming illegal immigrants overnight”.
And the Treasuy's "forecasts" were objectively beneath contempt.
Michael Woolgar
- Ariel Tejera Sep 20, 2016
  
  Well ... not so. Brexit hasn't even started, so its predicted consequences have yet to come. For the time being, you can check the growth preditions for Britain, before and after the vote. Bad indeed.
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- John Brian Shannon Sep 19, 2016
  
  Hi Michael,
  
  I agree with you. The claims of Remainers are at least as misleading as those of the Brexiters.
  
  Let's not forget, that the claims of the Remainers under David Cameron formed the government, and therefore, nominally at least, represented the government's official position.
  
  Brexiters, for the most part, were non-government and therefore, not representative of official government position, if not quite official policy, at that point.
  
  It's a big distinction.
  
  When people at the local coffee shop tell me not to buy ABC company product because it's defective, that is one thing. But when the CEO and other senior executives of ABC company tell me not to buy ABC product because it's defective, that's a completely different thing.
  
  One is hearsay, while the other has the official stamp of approval.
  
  Best regards, JBS
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Tom W Sep 18, 2016

The author seems completely incapable of finding a single example of lying or truthiness from the Left. Ironic, given the central lament that voters are rejecting experts.

In the U.S., the collapse of civil and structured debate, open dialogue, fact-based analysis, acknowledgement of uncertainty, comfort with nuance, and general civility has been broad-based and led by the elites, many of whom identify as "liberals".
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Oeufs Bruns Sep 18, 2016

Hasn't it always been ever thus? Remember the Maine, the Gulf of Tonkin,the Manchurian Incident and the Reichstag Fire to name a few. Diplomacy by other means, indeed.
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Aristotle Copernicus Sep 18, 2016

Why are all the negative examples focusing on conservative actions and none focusing on Liberals like Hillary Clinton. Is this just a hit piece?
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Fernando Centeno Sep 18, 2016

Well said, well done, thank you, for the higher-order truths you present here. Hopefully, "peak truthiness" will die on the vine.
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Petey Bee Sep 16, 2016

Truthiness is one of those words that takes something ugly and makes it cute. Colbert did it with a delicious sense of comedic irony, I don't see any of that here.
It's just dumbing down something that does not need to be dumbed down any further. (or am I overestimating the audience of this publication?)

Also the cuteness of the term greatly understates its destructive potential. Like the word "optics", when used to describe the priority of appearances over substance. I hate that word.

The problem isn't lack of trust in a body of experts when a prominent one betrays his obligations to their profession, by falsifying information presented to the public, on some important subject. The problem is the act of actually falsifying.

Lack of trust is appropriate until the pattern changes. Perhaps the internet age is accelerating the fool-me-twice-shame-on-me learning process here, so its timescale is once again comparable to a human lifetime. There's potential here, as long as a reasonable number of countries can overcome the transition and maintain the institutions of democratic government.
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j. von Hettlingen Sep 15, 2016

Lucy P. Marcus says "truthiness" - the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true - is "on the march," since TV satirist Stephen Colbert debuted the word in a 2005 show. For years the public had to put up with conservative politicians and Fox News using "gut feelings or opinions as valid statements" and fake statistics as facts, but no one had a word for it yet. Colbert discovered that word - which became the word of the year for 2006 - and perfectly undermined its use by calling attention to its absurdity.
The author says this year "might be considered one of peak truthiness," with leading Brexiteers and Donald Trump demonstrating that they can invent "facts" and repeat them often enough that they ultimately "become true." Opportunists in the recent Brexit vote and Trump have infused the pulbic with poison, which contained two key ingredients of their strategy: the scapegoating of immigrants and Trump's “truthful hyperbole” - a game he claimed in his 1987 book "The Art of the Deal", as an innocent form of exaggeration and very effective form of promotion. Or “truthiness”, as defined by Stephen Colbert - truth that comes from the gut rather than facts. This quality is woven into the Trump family history, where members stretched the truth about their own immigrant story and wealth to improve their prospects.
According to the late US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” It is widely true that many "politicians and electorates are constructing their own alternate realities," eroding the trust that the public is "entitled" to have. While Brexiteers and Trump's supporters dismiss truth and evidence because they have a low opinion of experts, saying they can't be trusted, they have total confidence in their leaders, caring little how they fare with the facts and instil fear.
The Brexit referendum was won on a drumbeat of anti-foreigner sentiment. It’s the same tune being played by Trump in the US - the same tune that was played in the 1930s, when people are afraid.
In Britain the Brexiteers' drumbeat was echoed by rabidly right-wing media, which served a bunch of unscrupulous liars and political zealots as propaganda tool, unchallenged by a flaccid elite, which didn't believe that Brexit would actually happen.
On the other side of the Atlantic certain strata of the society are being swept along in Trump's flood of poisonous rhetoric, which is misleadingly true at best, devastatingly false at worst. The question is whether American voters can rescue themselves and reach shore before they are being dragged down into Trump's political grave.
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John Brian Shannon Sep 15, 2016

Hi Lucy,

If each century were to be summed-up in one short quote, this quote would cover the 21st century better than any other.

"Voters, particularly in the advanced economies, are jaded by years of broken political promises, revelations of cover-ups, and relentless political and media spin. Opaque or dubious dealings have cast doubt on the integrity of organizations and institutions on which we should be able to rely." -- Lucy P. Marcus

As always, very best regards, JBS
- Norm Winn Sep 19, 2016
  
  JBS,
  
  Unfortunately, that may well prove to be the case. I remember as a kid, telling an untruth resulted in a trip out back of the woodshed. Maybe we need to resurrect some figurative woodsheds around the capital and various media centers.
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Curtis Carpenter Sep 15, 2016

One question that most of us blithely ignore in conversations like this is: what exactly makes something a "fact?" It's an ancient philosophical question, but to ignore it is ultimately -- in my view -- to adopt the position that anyone who is having trouble determining "the facts" needs only to ask me...

The necessity of choice is the price we pay for our short-term lease on existence -- and the "facts" we each embrace are, in the end, the products of our choices. Sometimes we chose well, and other times we choose badly -- but chose we must. Which leads, in the end, to Nietzsche who wrote "there are no facts -- only interpretations."
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Bing De La Vega Sep 15, 2016

Ms Mrcus, Timely that your piece ought to address the "truthiness" in politics particularly, which has been skewed over the years. That everything and anything goes In the US. The theme of your piece maybe catching up with HIlllary Clinton. Rightfully. But the larger problem is that the so-called "establishment" on both the out-of touched elephants and the free-spending donkies continue to look the other way involving possibly, criminal behavioir in this case against the democrat. It has been the norm in American politics to win at all cost - damn the morals and the laws. So, is it any wonder that the two presidential candidates today in the US are both the least preferred, which of thetwo is least evil. The biggest losers are the electorate when the system is rigged at times illegally during such chaotic primaries and if that were not enough, a trick up the sleeves with them super-delegates many have declared their votes for Hillary even before the primaries got halfway supposedly to game the minds of undecided which this year there are too many. I'm even unsure myself wheterh to vote this year. Am a democrat and can't vote for her. The Donald has yet to coem clean really but many say he is the least of you know,,
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大行其道的感实性

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大行其道的感实性

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