Roshomon Nation
Yesterday, I was in an email discussion with our old pal Duffy regarding the SwiftVet dustup. In the course of the debate, Duffy made an interesting observation: “Perhaps this is lesson in the slippery slope that is moral relativism.” While I’m not sure about the moral component, this is definitely an object lesson in ontological relativism – that is to say, the idea that reality itself is subject to constructed interpretation – which in my view is much more dangerous.
People can honestly disagree over right and wrong, or whether God exists or not, because those are ideas beyond the physical plane and it’s hard to find concrete evidence one way or the other. It’s another matter entirely to dispute the objective truth of science, mathematics or history. At a certain point, you don’t have conflicting “versions” of a fact or event – you have the fact which is true upon observation, and any alternate telling of it, which is false to a greater or lesser degree, depending entirely on the evidence. Our perceptions may vary, but, unless you are a hardcore mystic or talking about sub-atomic particles, the properties of the physical world and the events that transpire in it are not a matter of opinion.
In certain cases, there is doubt or ambiguity about historical fact. There are plenty of events in the misty past where dispute over motivation, agency or simple matters of fact are impossible to resolve conclusively because the evidence doesn’t exist. In our own time, we seem to have the opposite problem: too much evidence. This, combined with postmodern philosophical modes of analysis that impute subjectivity to every intellectual process, can give the disorienting impression that reality itself is up for grabs. But really, it isn’t.
One can always construct curious cases where subjectivity is appropriate. “Roshomon,” the 1952 film by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, famously depicts an incident from four different points of view, without coming to any conclusions about which interpretation is correct. But such cases should be the exception, not the rule. Traditionally, we have applied certain common-sense guides to conflicting accounts of events in order to render a clear verdict on historical truth. Among the basic rules:
- Assertions which are demonstrably false (contrary to established facts) must be discounted.
- Actions which appear to be illogical or unmotivated require further explanation before being accepted at face value.
- Accounts corroborated by documentary evidence are better than claims made with no supporting documents.
- The more credible witnesses who provide direct testimony to an event, the more likely it is true
- Eyewitness accounts trump accounts of witnesses farther from the action.
- Witnesses who have stuck to a consistent account and interpretation are more trustworthy than those who change their stories.
- Witnesses who have no conflicts of interest are more trustworthy than those who have demonstrable ulterior motives.
- Witnesses with a record of lying and distorting on other matters must be suspected of lying about the matter in question.
- Unaided or unsolicited testimony is more credible than stories that are coaxed, coerced or lead out of a witness.
- Simple, plausible explanations are more likely to be true than complicated conspiracy theories
If we applied those tests to the latest set of conflicting accounts over John Kerry’s military service, for example, we would find conflicts of interest on both sides (the Swifties might lie because they hate Kerry, Kerry might lie to make himself look better in the election), and certain small inconsistencies that can be attributed to honest gaps in recollection. But on every other count, Kerry’s account is consistent with the standards for historical truth, while that of his accusers is riddled with shortcomings that tend to discredit it. To believe the accusers, you have to explain away an enormous number of discrepancies and contradictions, ignore mounds of unimpeachably credible testimony on Kerry’s behalf, and utterly neglect the well-established pattern of deceptive behavior of the sponsors of the SwiftVet group, namely Rove and Bush.
And yet, millions of Americans including some highly-educated people in the media refuse to make the simplest of judgments. Some of the true-believers – probably most at this point – are blinded by partisanship. The SwiftVet story is consistent with their internal narrative of “Bush=heroic, Kerry=soft, liberal wimp,” and defuses the cognitive dissonance engendered by the possibility that Kerry might have, at core, more character and moral courage than the Leader in whose archetypal masculinity they have such an enormous emotional investment. It’s simply easier to believe the Swifties, despite all the blatant problems with their story, than accept the idea of Kerry as someone who did the right thing without some kind of larger sinister agenda.
But others seem uneasy with the very act of making a choice. Maybe they agree with Bob Dole, who speculated that, when there’s that much talk, some of it must be true. Or, perhaps, like the OJ jury, they mistake the possibility of an alternative interpretation of obvious facts, posed by people with a vested interest in influencing them toward a particular outcome, as a story with an equal claim to the truth. By this weird inversion of logic, since there might be an alternative explanation, then the alternative explanation must be true.
Yes, it’s good to keep an open mind. But once the evidence is in, there’s nothing wrong with applying the powers of observation, the wisdom of experience, and plain common sense to make a determination. Kerry and the SwiftVets can’t both be right about the facts in dispute; Bush and his critics can’t both be right about the circumstances under which he left the National Guard in 1972 (and there, as with Kerry, the burden is on those who would challenge the documentary record, the parts of which we’ve seen support Bush). Both Bush and Kerry are entitled to their reputations, without a vague cloud of “questions” surrounding events whose accuracy can be established by preponderance of evidence.
Making determinations about truth and falsehood is one of the great powers of the human mind, and over the years, we’ve established some very good rules of evidence to guide us in our judgments. If we as a society become reluctant, or, worse, unable, to separate one from the other, we not only lose our moral compass but also our intellectual one.
8:54:27 AM 
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