Facts vs. Truth

Screen capture from Meet the Press, NBC

Rudy Giulaini claiming that "truth isn't truth" is so strange, but WHY it's strange has been missed by the people reacting to his comments. 

It is a tenet of conservationism that there IS an absolute truth, outside of human experience and perception, that it is fixed, and relatively easy to understand. That is where literal reading of the Bible comes from. 

Conservatives, in the meantime, are skeptical about "new" knowledge, particularly when it contradicts the established narrative. This is where climate change denial comes from. I can easily understand a conservative saying that "facts are not the same thing as truth because facts are always suspect." 

The trouble for Giulaini is that this idea goes both ways. An administration that thrives on ignoring evidence, "alternative facts", and innuendo cannot be assumed to be telling the truth. But the way that Giulaini said "truth is not truth" smacks of propaganda and "if I say it enough times, they'll believe it IS the truth." And if the truth is not the truth, it leads to a mindset that lies are not lies. 

It seems to me that we see this "truth is what we persuade people it is" mindset all the time in the bogus and easily debunked claims that float thought the advocacy media. 

That is why we NEED professional, trained journalists, whose job it is to question claims, and fearlessly seek the actual truth, among the jumble of facts and opinions. The advocacy media can't do that for us, which is why we need the professional journalistic media.