The Coat Rack

I had an odd dream last night that lingered well into the day.I was having a conversation with a guy. I don’t know who he was. Young. Colored hair, tattoos, tackle box hardware on his face. We were deep into it, and I went into a monologue.“It’s not enough to have truth on your side. For crying out loud, even saying it is a cliché. It’s not that you believe something is true, it’s that you think your belief is the truth itself. You start with certainty, because doubt is a sign of weakness. You know everything because you researched it. You have all those tabs open on your damn computer so you can look it up. But sometimes you’re wrong. We all know plenty of things, but know so little. And some of us are really smart and know more than the next person. Truth is not a coat rack to hang your belief on. It’s the other way around, man, it’s the other way around!”When I woke up I was trying to sort out what enzyme started that dream. What thought had been drifting around at the margins that set off such a show.I’ve been watching the political situation in NYC with some fascination, Mamdani and company sweeping into office on a tide of conviction. I don’t live there. It doesn’t affect me directly. But the rhetoric is fascinating because it’s hyperbolic college speak about ideas that have not been tested, at least in our system of government. Fine, that’s a common problem. And like Trump, yes, like Trump, there’s no apparent recognition that being wrong is even possible. Because to be wrong would be to admit that your ideas, and your self, are not invincible. And repeating a falsehood ad infinitum doesn’t change what’s true.It’s the opposite of Socratic. It’s dogmatic, didactic, vapid, and banal. Intransigence isn’t a moral failing anymore. It’s a superpower. Before you send me a note complaining that this has gone political, I’m not here to argue for or against any of them or their ideas. What’s bristling is something underneath the ideas. The disappearance of truth as a necessary component of public discourse.Truth is something measurable. Right? Something knowable. Now it means something agreed upon. To be clear, consensus isn’t always wrong. Scientific agreement, legal standards, and even the messy democratic process, these are forms of shared belief we depend on. The problem isn’t agreement. It’s agreement as a substitute for evidence. And opinions, as strongly felt as they can be, aren’t truth either, no matter how many people hold them.I think values can function as truth, and they sure present as deeply felt. If you believe abortion is evil, to you, that’s not an opinion you hold loosely, it’s a fact, as real as stone, derived from premises you hold as foundational. It’s also measurable, within that system. People who believe in free choice also see this as truth and fact. Both sides are arguing from different value systems, and they’re coherent to them, each producing its own version of truth. I don’t think that’s the problem. People have always organized around values. The problem is when a value-based truth gets presented as empirical fact, as something measurable outside the belief system, when it isn’t.If a group of parents agrees that vaccines are harmful, the agreement becomes the truth. If a coalition believes government does everything cheaper, the coalition makes it so. We say it with conviction. We all agree, therefore it is so. The point isn’t what’s true. The point is the agreement.Parsing out these differing values with others and making them into law, or doctrine, or policy, is what governments, courts, and even the church are designed to do. Not to declare one value system the winner, but to create a process by which competing truths can be heard, weighed, and negotiated. That process depends on one thing: a shared commitment to honest argument. Not agreement. Argument. And it’s a constant conversation. It never stops. We have to contend with the vulnerability of consensus, that sometimes a majority agrees on something that we don’t agree with. When the consensus alone gets mistaken for truth, the institutions don’t just fail. They get captured. By the loudest. By the most organized. By the most certain. And certainty, as we’ve established, is the one thing that has never required being right.The machinery of groupthink is everywhere now. MAGA. Moral panics. Socialist vanguards. The specific flavor doesn’t matter. Surround yourself with people who agree with you, minimize contact with the dirty and infected ideas of those who don’t, and utopia becomes possible. Of course it’s ridiculous. But stupid is as stupid is.Around the time I was facing arrest, before or after, I don’t recall exactly, a woman I know was posting on social media that you’re more likely to be struck by lightning than to be wrongfully accused. The amen chorus applauded. It was stupid, and it wasn’t true by any measure. But it didn’t m