RUTHFULLY YOURS

Students of Friedrich Nietzsche, or those who consort with such dubious people, will recognize the source of my title. It is the English version of the title Nietzsche employed for his early, unfinished essay Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne (1873).

The essay made a splash among pampered graduate students who endeavored to relieve the boredom of their humdrum lives with dreams of derring-do. Consider the essay’s opening:

Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of “world history,” but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die.

Cozy, armchair nihilists just love that sort of thing.  They repeat such slogans to themselves while primping before first dates, seldom wondering why there never seems to be a second.

Cosmological angst was not Nietzsche’s only sweetmeat on offer in this essay, though. Even more popular were his epistemological-moral musings.  This is the key passage:

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.

In short, says Nietzsche, “to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors.” From a moral perspective, he concludes, “to tell the truth” is “the duty to lie according to a fixed convention.”

Such observations are like catnip to aspiring relativists. Who knew that Kamala Harris, vice president of the United States, was a deacon in this church of cosmic futility?

Well, I am not sure that Harris herself is a paid-up member of this cynical coven. But her stage managers and stunt doubles certainly are.

When it comes to lying “according to a fixed convention” and calling the result “truth,” Harris is an inveterate if febrile purveyor of the fodder she is fed.  Her debate with Donald Trump last week on ABC was, from one point of view, a dog’s breakfast, but, from another, it was a mesmerizing exercise in vertiginous, pseudo-Nietzschean legerdemain.

As has become widely recognized, the debate was really a sort of ambush in which the execrable immoderators blatantly took sides, constantly “fact-checking” Trump with erroneous objections while letting Harris slide with a steady stream of lies emitted according to the fixed convention of Democratic talking points.  As I said at the time, the real loser in that exchange was ABC News, whose credibility is now in the gutter.

Various public-spirited people, from media stars like Laura Ingraham to ordinary citizens with an X account, have come forward to provide inventories of Harris’s—and the moderators’—lies.  One of the most complete was provided by @BelannF, who posted this useful inventory in paratactic summary:

Project 2025 – Lie

National abortion ban – Lie

“Very fine people” hoax – Lie

Will be a Dictator – Lie

Blaming Trump for Afghanistan- Lie

Racism and division by Trump – Lie

Never said she will ban fracking – Lie

Rally goers leaving early – Lie

“I will go over my plan” – Lie

Police died on Jan 6th – Lie

“Bloodbath” comment – Lie

Trumps stance on IVF – Lie

Won’t take guns – Lie

Trump weak on foreign policy – Lie

Trump friends with Putin, Un – Lie

Trump inciting Jan 6. – Lie

No military in combat zones – Lie

She provides no sources for these assertions, but you can look them up in a nonce. I’ll go first with three to get you started. Early on in the evening, Harris angrily recycled one of the most thoroughly “debunked” (i.e., refuted) claims: that Trump said there were “very fine people” on both sides at the neo-Nazi demonstration at Charlottesville.  Here’s a video clip of his remarks. Far from describing the thugs as “very fine people,” he castigated them in the strongest terms.  Then why is this lie so frequently recycled?  Perhaps it is a political application of the old adage repititio mater memoriae: “Repetition is the mother of memory.”  If you repeat a lie often enough people come to believe it, or half believe, or at least wonder about the veracity of its contrary.

Harris also claimed that Trump said there would be a “bloodbath” if he were not elected.  But what he actually said was that the auto industry would face a financial bloodbath if the Biden-Harris administration’s climate policies were enacted.  And so they would.

Perhaps my favorite lie was her claim that there were no active-duty American military personnel in a war zone at present. Anyone who reads the news knows that is not true, as these American soldiers testified with refreshing candor.

What has been fascinating to watch is how the post-debate consensus has evolved.  At first, many commentators, while lamenting ABC’s abysmal and unprofessional performance, thought that Harris got the better of Trump.  As the days passed, however, that view began to collapse before the mounting evidence that, outside the echo chambers of the media, Trump was widely considered to have won. The great Hugh Hewitt briefly outlined the common evolution from “Trump-lost-to-you-know-what,-Trump-won” on his show.

Then there was the equally great Scott Adams, whose trajectory closely tracked Hugh Hewitt’s: “I’m revising my debate scoring,” Adams said on X. My first impression was a tie, which I called a Harris victory.”  Then he changed his mind.  Why? It was because of the meme that is sweeping the interest even as I write.

But the only thing I recall about the debate today is “They’re eating the dogs.”

Visual. Scary. Viral. Memorable. Repeatable. And directionally correct in terms of unchecked immigration risk.

It’s the strongest play of the election.

Trump won the debate.

I gotta stop underestimating his game. Trump had no base hits in the debate but his long ball is still rising. Incredible.

Harris may be an accomplished liar. I’d wager Trump would win plaudits from Nietzsche for his visceral rhetorical skill.