I’m re-watching The Matrix for the same reason that the book 1984 has recently had a resurgence. The movie makes many of the same points as the book and it also contains several references to a Jean Baudrillard classic. Jean makes a good point:
"If he is this good at acting crazy, it's because he is." Nor is military psychology mistaken in this regard: in this sense, all crazy people simulate, and this lack of distinction is the worst kind of subversion. It is against this lack of distinction that classical reason armed itself in all its categories. But it is what today again outflanks them, submerging the principle of truth.
Beyond medicine and the army favored terrains of simulation, the question returns to religion and the simulacrum of divinity: "I forbade that there be any simulacra in the temples because the divinity that animates nature can never be represented." Indeed it can be. But what becomes of the divinity when it reveals itself in icons, when it is multiplied in simulacra? Does it remain the supreme power that is simply incarnated in images as a visible theology? Or does it volatilize itself in the simulacra that, alone, deploy their power and pomp of fascination - the visible machinery of icons substituted for the pure and intelligible Idea of God? This is precisely what was feared by Iconoclasts, whose millennial quarrel is still with us today.*3 This is precisely because they predicted this omnipotence of simulacra, the faculty simulacra have of effacing God from the conscience of man, and the destructive, annihilating truth that they allow to appear - that deep down God never existed, that only the simulacrum ever existed, even that God himself was never anything but his own simulacrum - from this came their urge to destroy the images. If they could have believed that these images only obfuscated or masked the Platonic Idea of God, there would have been no reason to destroy them. One can live with the idea of distorted truth. But their metaphysical despair came from the idea that the image didn't conceal anything at all, and that these images were in essence not images, such as an original model would have made them, but perfect simulacra, forever radiant with their own fascination. Thus this death of the divine referential must be exorcised at all costs.
The question of whether or not the right wing lies or not misses the more important question of whether their models of the world, however different from the real world, are complex and fun enough to be “forever radiant with their own fascination.”
Truth for truth’s sake, taken to the extreme, is its own lie. A simple thought experiment can show this. Suppose you have a sick loved one and are told that you must lie to them about their illness in order for them to have any chance at survival i.e. placebo affect. Now suppose you are asked to espouse a lie, not because it will save a life, but that it will simply make a person’s life better. Or suppose it will make billions of lives better. Your calculation of whether or not to tell the truth can easily become more complicated than simply determining veracity.
Take climate change or terrorism or any other recent Trump fabrication as an example. Some recent Daily Kos diaries imply that truth will obviously eventually beat these lies. But the question is less lie or not and more fun or not. If climate change denial offers enough entertainment through lording the “truth” over liberals and fitting in better with Fox News mindset in general, then truth or not is, for many people, moot.
In short we cannot win by asking the general populace to accept the truth because it’s the truth. Like smoking we have to cut off bad habits before they become addictions. We have to make the truth more fun than the lies because the truth can take us all to new and better places. Otherwise the truth is seen as just another despot:
Seen from the viewpoint of politics, truth has a despotic character. It is therefore hated by tyrants, who rightly fear the competition of a coercive force they cannot monopolize, and it enjoys a rather precarious status in the eyes of governments that rest on consent and abhor coercion. Facts are beyond agreement and consent, and all talk about them – all exchanges of opinion based on correct information – will contribute nothing to their establishment. Unwelcome opinion can be argued with, rejected, or compromised upon, but unwelcome facts possess an infuriating stubbornness that nothing can move except plain lies. The trouble is that factual truth, like all other truth, peremptorily claims to be acknowledged and precludes debate, and debate constitutes the very essence of political life. The modes of thought and communication that deal with truth, if seen from the political perspective, are necessarily domineering; they don’t take into account other people’s opinions, and taking these into account is the hallmark of all strictly political thinking.