Truth and the Hard Work of Thinking

In the early days of the Trump Administration, we have been treated to conflicting information on a range of issues. Alternatively, we have been asked to believe that there has been massive voter fraud or that such claims have no basis; that immigrants from several predominantly Muslim countries pose a serious national security threat or that they are just family members fleeing for their safety; that the inaugural crowd was the largest ever or that it was not. People on either side of these claims marshal facts and "alternative facts" to back them up. So how do we know what the truth is?

Effective government depends on truth, without which we get shoddy thinking and disastrous action. Reflecting on the Vietnam War in The March of Folly, historian Barbara Tuchman wrote that it resulted from "the absence of reflective thought." In Iraq, sloppy analysis concluded first that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, second that we would be greeted as liberators, and third that his overthrow would spark the spread of democracy throughout the Middle East. Each conclusion was wrong.

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