Jim Stempel

Delusion Confusion—The Tortured History of Truth in America

"To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle."   --- George Orwell

What does an old, artsy Italian film have to tells us about truth in America? Let’s take a look.

In 1962 – a moment in time when meaning was often the defining factor in both film and literature – Italian author Georgio Bassani penned The Garden of Finzi-Continis. Turned into a movie in 1970 by director Vittorio De Sica, the story portrays the downward spiral of a wealthy Jewish family in Ferrara, Italy, caught in the encroaching, genocidal storm of Nazi fanaticism during the 1930’s.

The Continis own a fine, walled estate in the heart of the city, replete with gardens, tennis courts, and pools. There they enjoy tennis, games, and intellectual pursuits as the world around them crumbles into murderous violence. Of this, they take no notice. I saw the film as a young man and – despite my youth and the difficulty of sub-titles – clearly understood the obvious self-deception and willful evasion involved in the Continis’ downfall.

For the Continis and their friends, the story does not end well, as the agents of doom finally make their inevitable house-call. I can recall at the time shaking my head and wondering how they could have deceived themselves so completely. How could they have ignored the coming storm, obvious as it appeared to the entire movie audience – the clanging Nazi sirens just outside the walls, the escalating persecution of Jews, and so on, and so on. The story was a profound portrayal of just how individuals – and, yes, whole nations – looked the other way as the Nazis rose to power, consumed in hopeful worlds of self-delusion until it was entirely too late. The film won the Academy Award in 1972 for Best Foreign Film.

Yet truth is now, and has always been, an elusive commodity to corral. Indeed, the search for truth requires a firm commitment and tireless effort simply to catch a meager, fleeting glimpse, a glimpse that often blurs maddeningly under more rigorous inquiry. Nevertheless, with effort, the glimpses can pile-up like nuggets of gold, blessing the mind with sudden visions of clarity. Unfortunately, today in the United States the search for truth has been stifled exponentially by means of the abrupt insertion of vast fraudulent claims, launched like malicious missiles into the American narrative, all capable of momentarily bewildering even the clearest of minds.

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From Whence Democracy?

We are being told these days that democracy has had a good run, but now it’s time to move-on. Time to face-up to the fact that our old, rusty, worn-out democratic republic is obviously antiquated and incapable of churning-out the changes we so desperately need. Let’s cut down on those bothersome rights, deep-six that archaic Constitution, and slip into something far more comfortable; you know, compassionate, caring, and forward-looking. Sounds simple!

………Really?

Before we toss democracy into history’s dustbin, I think it might be wise to take a closer look.

Let’s start by going back to the beginning. Remember this? “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This is the first line of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, penned by Thomas Jefferson in 1776. From this, two things have always jumped-out at me. The first is Jefferson’s use of the term “all men,” and the second is the idea that the truths he listed were – and presumably still are – “self-evident.”

We understand now that Jefferson was not referring to all men at all, but specifically white men, and that women were not even within the realm of consideration. Fortunately, over time, these omissions have been rectified, and the current principle – that all people are created equal – is now the gold standard for rights across Western democracies.

That Thomas Jefferson did not actually mean what he wrote has been justly criticized. And that belies another truth not often acknowledged; democratic thought is now and has always been, evolving conceptually. Jefferson’s limited democratic principles were a product of his limited American culture. As American culture evolved, so did our inclusive conception of democracy. In that sense, democracy should be thought of as developmental, and like all things developmental, it had to start somewhere. Right? But how exactly did democracy get started in the first place? From whence democracy?

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