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Truth never dies

With all of the legitimate criticisms to make of U.S.
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With all of the legitimate criticisms to make of U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration - and Lord knows, they are legion in number - far too many left-leaning writers and journalists argue with somber faces that he's out to destroy democracy, the Constitution and mom's apple pie.

The hyperbolic title of Michiko Kakutani's book says it all - The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump.

The book is a quick, entertaining read but its central premise is outright nonsense. Trump wouldn't know the truth if it bashed him in the face repeatedly with brass knuckles, so how on Earth can he possibly be the death of it?

Far more intelligent, cruel, devious and evil men have tried. Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Benito Mussolini, Muammar Gaddifi, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Francisco Franco, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Augusto Pinochet and Ferdinand Marcos gave it their best shot.

They were successful in murdering hundreds of millions of people but all their tanks, bombs, guns and concentration camps couldn't kill truth.

Trump and his buddies Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un are just the latest men to assault truth but they, even with the latest social media tools, are no match for truth's resilience.

That is the tragic irony of Kakutani's book. Fibbing (or exaggerating) about the death of truth in an effort to save it is as morally corrupt as American evangelicals supporting an immoral womanizer for president because he'll appoint good God-fearing justices to the Supreme Court. At the most generous, her book is short-selling truth, the very ideal she seeks to elevate.

Truth is elusive, not only to its attackers but also to its advocates.

Journalism, science, the law, religion, education and art all pursue truth but both the tools and its wielders are imperfect. That doesn't mean we should stop seeking the truth in our lives but we should accept that truth is tricky and almost always refuses simple, binary true-false understandings.

In a complicated, uncertain world, people demand truth become easier.

When it refuses to accommodate them, they abandon it in favour of subjective truth (what's true to me) and then they use the internet and social media to find like-minded people with their own convenient truths about climate change, fluoride, vaccinations, residential schools, the Holocaust and Russian meddling in elections and so on.

It must be true if other people like me also think it's true, a self-reinforcing argument tied to ego and self-worth, not to truth and understanding.

It's that logic that allows a white Chicago police officer, on trial this week for the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager, to dismiss the camera footage of what happened because "the video doesn't show my perspective."

Truth cares not for my perspective or your perspective or Trump's perspective or anyone else's. Truth is selfish. It cares only for itself and there is no escaping it, no matter how hard we try. Like the Police song goes, truth hits everybody, from its fiercest defenders to its angriest detractors.

The theme for National Newspaper Week this year is Now More Than Ever because truth matters now more than ever. Without truth, there is no love, there is no trust, the ties that bind families and communities and countries and humanity are illusions, morality is in the eye of the beholder and it's every man and woman for themselves.

Now more than ever, we must stand for truth and stand with those who would defend truth. They're easy to separate from the frauds.

The champions of truth insist no one - and especially themselves - have all the answers; the betrayers of truth say they - and often they alone - know the whole truth and demean all who disagree.

The champions of truth are happy to be wrong if it brings them closer to the truth; the betrayers of truth seek only information and views to confirm their bias.

The champions of truth know truth can never die; the betrayers of truth claim it's already dead.

The champions of truth adapt to the truth, no matter how difficult or painful that may be; the betrayers of truth adapt the truth into a lie to make themselves feel better.

The champions of truth invite discussion and dissent; the betrayers of truth fear and attack opposition.

The champions of truth seek to inform and empower everyone; the betrayers of truth seek to harm and discriminate.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know," the English poet Keats wrote 200 years ago.

Truer words were never spoken.

-- Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout