Truth is not objective, anyway.....

i hope the next black teen arrested for looking at a cop the wrong way also gets a segment on the today show

— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) January 22, 2019

Love may mean you never have to say you're sorry (sorry; I lived through the '70's; it left scars); but pride means you never want to say you were wrong:

A CNN reporter traveled to Montecillo, Iowa where soybean prices have plummeted because of the trade war with China, but where farmers are getting free-flowing subsidies to offset their losses with $12 billion in American tax dollars.

The farmers he talked to support Trump, while their neighbors are aghast.

Farmers are able to subsist on their generous handouts, but are not able to invest in infrastructure on their farms with banks refusing to loan money.

They also can’t get data they need from the Department of Agriculture because of the shutdown.

Despite this, Dave Walton, a soybean farmer, “refused” to criticize Trump, who flipped the state from blue to red with the help of people like him.

“He campaigned on a lot of the things he’s doing right now and he’s doing it,” Walton said.
Farmer Brian Wolken said a lot of farmers are “big fans of Donald Trump.”

“Until he’s out of office I don’t think you’ll hear them say anything bad about him,” he said. “They’re just gonna say ‘This is going to be good for us in the long run.'”

Not everyone has been swayed, though. Others in the town, which now has a Democratic Congressman, said they are shocked by how the farmers are acting.

One eye doctor said he’s lost patients because he criticized Trump, and doesn’t care.

An elderly rural Iowa resident named Mel Manternach said it’s “unbelievable that the farmers of Iowa continue to support Trump.”

“I can’t believe that they’re that blind,” he said. “Some of the die-hards are dying harder.”

I would like to say I'm surprised;but I'm not.  More interesting than the mulishness is the reasoning:  “He campaigned on a lot of the things he’s doing right now and he’s doing it,” Walton said.  Uh-huh; name three.  But there's the rub:  who knows what is true, except what we believe to be true?

The example of the MAGA hat wearing teens is instructive here.  Which video of the event is the "true" record of what happened?  Everyone has their point of view, their preference, their conclusion.  I have mine, but it's based mostly on the smirk on the kid's face, and that same kid's statement that "I had every right to be standing there."  Punk needs to learn some respect for his elders, especially if those elders are non-white.  He also doesn't shift responsibility by immediately following that statement with a claim he wishes he could have had a dialogue with the older man.  His desire for dialogue comes from a place of privilege:  white and economic privilege.  He wants a discussion on his terms, not on terms of equality or even humility.  Then again, he's a punk kid; I can forgive him his sins, because they are mine, too.

Let's be honest.

But what of the farmer who claims Trump has accomplished what he said he would?  Based on what, aside from Trump's claims of accomplishment?  Then again, what other claims are there?  There are reports now that "moderate" Democrats and Republicans want to end the standoff over the border wall, but those reports overlook the "poison pills" in the legislative package the White House sent to Capitol Hill.  Where is the good faith required to reach a deal?  Or is the problem just the stubbornness of Democratic leaders, who should yield now and stand firm next time (until they yield then)?  Arguments, arguments, arguments, and where is the truth, the valid picture of reality?  Can we even know, when reality is whatever is reported to us by the news?  Aye, there's the rub.

Trump calls all news he doesn't like "fake news," and it's a pernicious lie.  But how do I verify the news?  What is being discussed among Senators and Representatives?  What efforts are being made to end this stupid stalemate, and why?  How do I know, except what the news tells me, and news reports are inherently incomplete and inaccurate.  What gets into the next report depends on editors and reporters and decision about what the "narrative" is for this story or that one.  Has Trump accomplished anything?  I don't think so, but my opinion is based on news reports.  Trump claims he's accomplished much because of judicial appointments and regulation reform (not all his Cabinet Secretaries have resigned in disgrace).  Is that an accomplishment, or merely a shift in the winds that will shift back in two years?  Even Gorsuch and Kavanaugh haven't (yet) significantly altered the trajectory of the Supreme Court.  Besides, I don't consider those things accomplishments; and in the face of the trade wars and the significant failures to achieve anything in foreign diplomacy and concerns that Trump's actions will trigger a world-wide recession, and the support of farmers in Iowa that can only be described as mulishness and the ethos that, however bad things are, farmers can survive it....

Truth, as Kierkegaard observed, is subjective.  Which is not to say truth is relative, but just that what is, in Tillich's terms, your "ultimate concern," determines what is most important to you; and what is most important to you, is what is true.  "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be, also," is a true statement, but it's also a statement of truth, a statement about the nature of truth.  Now, do you put your truth on a MAGA hat, or a determination to prevail against the future, or on what news reports say?  Or is the problem that we don't really know where to seek our truth?