So, the POTUS lies about all kinds of things, and is singularly ill-informed.

Okay, but what about the rest of them? The ones who seem to influence the debate about alternative facts.

True or False? The POTUS can count and gave to the nation and the world an accurate count of the revelers who came to the capital to celebrate his inauguration on January 20 last.

True or False? The POTUS gave an accurate description of American policy (before his time in the Oval Office) when, in reply to the challenge by Bill O’Reilly about doing business with Putin the killer, he said, “There are a lot of killers. Do you think our country is so innocent?...”

True or False? Frederick Douglass showed up in Washington D.C. a few weeks ago.

True or False? The same Frederick Douglass once spoke thus:

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”

As Frederick Douglass declares, history is not experienced or understood by slave and master, by maid and mistress, by victim and victor, by powerless and powerful, and here now, by the 99% and the 1%, in the same way. The groups in conflict don't just interpret the same facts in different ways, but more categorically, they observe and depict the very facts differently.

In other words “alternate facts” have existed as long there have been conflict between oppressor and oppressed: between colonizer and colonized, between feudal lords and their serfs, between capital and labor, and so on. That is why we have needed a specific “pedagogy of the oppressed” or “a peoples’ history” of the U.S. Most critically, however, observation and depiction by the 99% and the 1% are not equivalent at all—not 2 sides of the same coin. In fact, objectivity belongs (and has always belonged) to the 99%.

A wise professor of mine was once criticized for not having considered both sides of the argument in a similar context of victim and victor. He had a simple reply: “What would you say is the other side of genocide?”

Moreover, inside smaller units of collective life—like the family, the workplace, a circle of friends, or a sports team, there are plenty of disputes about facts, based primarily on the allocation/usurpation of power and resources within these units. So, “alternative facts” don’t account for much of the privileged Trump vs Counter-Trump skirmishes. Rather, in the current use of the phrase, I find mostly partisan two-party politics over and over, and not much truth-seeking. There’s also the “come-back” desire for restoring legitimacy to the endowed losers of the last election. Nothing about serving the people in that.

The mass media, whom the POTUS has called, “enemy of the people” (See? He knows his Ibsen), seem desperate for atonement. The media millionaire’s club that relentlessly and shamelessly pushed Trump toward his nomination while ignoring outright Bernie, for example, now seems to regret its stupid, irresponsible brand of journalism. But “it is too late to say you’re sorry”, so the club members have decided that their only chance for redemption is to get angry at this President and vilify him to oblivion. Nothing about serving the people in that either.

What really frightens me is that people, who may or may not be neo-liberals in disguise, and who claim to be a part of the American “left”, (because right-wing talk show hosts say so?) appear to put real trust in America’s intelligence agencies like the FBI and the CIA. Their thinking appears to be that these agencies will restore democracy by challenging and defeating the POTUS and his lackeys! Are you kidding?

And talking about lackeys, there now seems to be much joy in Mudville because another military man and an intellectual too—Lt. Gen. McMaster has been appointed by Trump to be his national security adviser, completing the triumvirate of military men in his cabinet. (Now the talk is that Flynn guy was an anomaly—“dust in the wind”. RIP!)

In other words, the two most dangerous dimensions of the Trump administration (very scary to me) have little to do with big or tiny lies, or signs of apparent chaos in the Big House. They are, first, the obvious and emphatic connection between corporate+finance capital, and arms of the government, as evidenced by the ascendency of Tillerman and Mnuchin. And second, the other visible and direct alliance: between military “know-how”, and affairs of the state, starting with the special dispensation for Gen. Mattis. And let’s not be coy about the “intelligence community” in this holy alliance. These agencies are, always have been, and will continue to be instrumental in implementing policies of the state.

Well, these are the realities we face and this is the state of the State we must fight. No matter what the strategy, such a struggle will be protracted, not without considerable sacrifice and not without severe retaliation. Even the facts surrounding local events in Ferguson and Baltimore are proof enough.

Sorry, I haven’t discovered any “alternative facts” in this foreboding.

Sometime during his Comedy Central show, Stephen Colbert developed the concept of “truthiness”, initially referring to the doings of the Bush-Cheney administration. In essence, truthiness is the self-confident articulation of lies, half-truths and misinformation, as the truth. Of course, the first phase of truthiness concerned the Iraq war started by the Bush and company.

The plunge into Iraq and the disastrous consequence are well-documented, so only a couple of reminders will do. Here’s Bush to the nation: “We are now acting because the risks of inaction would be far greater. In one year, or five years, the power of Iraq to inflict harm on all free nations would be multiplied many times over.”

And here’s Cheney: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”

In 2008, Frank Rich invoked “truthiness” when he described John McCain's presidential campaign in The New York Times as an effort “to envelop the entire presidential race in a thick fog of truthiness”. Because, Rich wrote, “McCain, Sarah Palin and their surrogates keep repeating the same lies over and over not just to smear their opponents and not just to mask their own record. Their larger aim is to construct a bogus alternative reality so relentless it can overwhelm any haphazard journalistic stabs at puncturing it.” [my emphasis]

Trump “The Prevaricator-in-Chief” is not without gurus then, or lessons from the past. So here’s another example from when we were young—and were led into another futile, tragic war. Then, a fabricated enemy action against American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin was the equivalent of Iraq’s mythical WMDs.

Then LBJ said: “As President and Commander in Chief, it is my duty to the American people to report that renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action in reply...

...The determination of all Americans to carry out our full commitment to the people and to the government of South Viet-Nam will be redoubled by this outrage. Yet our response, for the present, will be limited and fitting. We Americans know, although others appear to forget, the risks of spreading conflict. We still seek no wider war.”

After that emerged a history with different accounting of facts—like description of battles, body counts, use of weapons (e.g. agent orange)... All that is well-documented too, and with living proof in mistreated, dysfunctional Vietnam Veterans.

Sorry again, all lies don’t have the same consequence, or all truths for that matter.

What will happen to the poisonous water supply of Flint, Michigan? How will the resurgence of oil-power play out against the Lakota people in the Dakotas?

I’ll try to pick out some more short true-false queries in the future from my bag of treasures.