Truth to Power

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The whole phrase that the liberals have — that they “speak truth to power” — is really starting to grate on me. Yes, cliches grate on me, and this is such a nasty little holdover from the seventies that it’s impossible to ignore, regardless of your attitude towards it. And my attitude towards the phrase, right now, is not positive. Why?

First of all, there are the underlying assumptions. The phrase assumes that the speaker is not in power (which is true right now for the liberals), with a bit of an assumption of never hoping to be in power.

Second of all, the phrase assumes that those who are in power are specifically liars, and bad in a general sense. Since the phrase does not describe those in power further, just that they are “in power,” there is a most definite assumption on the part of the user of the phrase that the holding of power is, in itself, a bad thing.

There are also two further possible concepts hidden in the phrase: either that those in power are purposely withholding the truth, or that they’re too stupid to know the truth. This latter concept is, I believe, currently the one held by the general garden-variety liberal right now.

Who knows what, and when, and why, and what they do with the knowledge, or lack of it… that’s too big of a tangle for anyone to get into.

And now for the last bit, the last nasty assumption in this phrase: that those who are not in power, by definition, do know the truth. That the state of being powerless confers knowledge of truth somehow. All it can confer is a different point of view.

So I’ve got the sneaking suspicion that, if anyone is silly enough to utter this phrase out loud and within earshot, I’ll just fall over laughing.

[hi OTB]

3 thoughts on “Truth to Power”

  1. Anytime I hear the word “Truth” in a political sentence, I discard it. Never seems to fit, no matter what political affiliation.

    Just like I never believe anything in commercials.

  2. And then, of course, all of us are supposed to forget that when these folks do get power, they are no more truthful than the people they replaced; they are simply more hypocritical about the lying. Hence, the spectacle of the recent and now largely unlamented “most ethical administration in history,” wherein the public who paid attention to this sort of thing could get whiplash watching the scandals zip by.

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