Creepy Joe’s War On Truth

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Many moons ago, when I was a mere stripling, I began my literary love affair with the ancient Roman historian Tacitus. Among a great many topics and themes, Tacitus returns to the nature of tyranny and censorship and the inversion of truth and justice quite often; in fact, those specific themes colour all of his writings, to various degrees. Tacitus lived through the reign of one of Rome’s most cruel and sadistic emperors, Domitian. His psyche seems to have been scarred by the experience. He wrote with a striking and often moving authenticity about what it was like to live through a censorious tyranny. How the best of men are weeded out, silenced and destroyed, while those who value their lives and careers above their integrity are forced to toe the line which they know beyond doubt to be subversive and wrong, at odds with truth. He chronicles how this struggle (identical to that of Winston Smith in 1984) takes it’s inevitable and profound toll upon the hearts and minds of men, how it ruins the very fabric of society and reduces us to little more than beasts.

In the 1990s when I first began to read Tacitus these concerns were as remote as those in a novel; fascinating - but with no direct impact on my day-to-day life. All the lessons had been learnt. The fascists and the communists had both been defeated, western liberal democracy had won out, and we need never again fear the return of state mandated untruth, blanket censorship and outright political suppression. 

How terribly child-like that notion has proven to be. How frightfully embarrassing to look back at such guileless naivete. Francis Fukuyama - thanks for nothing, bro.

And so, in the post-Trump world, where the progressive left daily launches fresh assaults on truth and dignity and justice, the writings of Tacitus appear not just poignant, but now, once again, also highly prescient.

In a United States, which is currently in the grips of a sinister and widespread digital and actual thought control, to hear Creepy Joe speak to congress and the world about the US arising from the flames, phoenix-like, “choosing hope over fear, truth over lies, light over darkness”, I cannot help but think of Maoist slogans that are utterly divorced from reality. Slogans that completely subvert truth, distort and hide the author's motivations, and make a mockery of fact.

Two thousand years ago, in the age of Trajan, Tacitus wrote:

“In those fires doubtless the Government imagined that it could silence the voice of Rome and annihilate the freedom of the Senate and men’s knowledge of the truth. They even went on to banish the professors of philosophy and exile all honourable accomplishments, so that nothing decent might anywhere confront them. We have indeed set up a record of subservience. Rome of old explored the utmost limits of freedom; we have plumbed the depths of slavery, robbed as we are by informers even of the right to exchange ideas in conversation. We should have lost our memories as well as our tongues had it been as easy to forget as to be silent.”

When Joe’s speechwriters speak through him about the need to protect democratic principles, to safeguard it against the forces that seek to undermine and destroy it, to “overcome the lies, anger, hate and fears that have pulled us apart”, I instinctively conjure the image of Winston Smith in room 101, being forced by O’Brien to accept into his heart the exact opposite of the truth. I hear the echoes of Stalinist propagandists insisting that their system of society and government is enlightened and just - certainly morally superior to all others.

The hypocrisy displayed in Biden’s speech yesterday is beyond insulting, it’s beyond perverse; it’s a symptom of some kind of outright insanity at the very core of US policy making.

How and why we have ended up in a situation where the rankest doublethink passes unchallenged by the majority of the mainstream media will be a matter for future historians (and possibly psychologists) to unpack and dissect. I am reminded, though, of the multiple times Tacitus warns us that moral cowards are eager to rush into servitude, and that there will never be a dearth of moral cowards. That ‘a shocking crime was committed on the unscrupulous initiative of a few individuals, with the blessing of more, and amid the passive acquiescence of all.’

Conversely, a war against truth, whether it be waged by Domitian, Commodus, Mao or Biden’s puppet masters, can always be combated. Reality can only be denied for so long. The unfettered human spirit can only be trampled and stomped upon for a finite amount of time before it bursts forth anew; let us just hope that the misery and destruction and bloodshed is kept to a minimum before that occurs.