The first day of the rest of … something.

[aadler]

Welcome, Mister President.

Many people responded to your electoral victory with exuberant optimism, others with horror and despair. I belong to neither group. You weren’t the candidate I wanted, and you’re not the president I wanted. My emotional response, when the results were clear on election night, was decidedly … mixed: I couldn’t take any real pleasure in your victory, but I took HUGE pleasure in your opponent’s defeat.

Nonetheless, you are the leader of this nation now. And, as I did at the advent of your predecessor, I am listing my hopes for your tenure in office.

I hope that you will put the good of the country ahead of the demands of your own ego, and (even if you are a liberal New York Democrat) that your notion of what constitutes the good of the country has some basis in reality.

I hope you retain your gleeful, unapologetic disdain for political correctness, but as a means of accomplishing things rather than simply as a way to show off.

I hope you understand on a visceral level the difference between those tactics and behaviors necessary to win the presidency, and those necessary to properly serve as President. Your habitual irreverence was a welcome treat when you used it to continually roast the media in their own pretensions; now that you speak for the nation, that needs to be tempered, because you have responsibilities now that you did not then.

You spent your entire career accomplishing things and doing it on a grand scale, even if the ‘things’ and the means used in achieving them were not always entirely admirable. I hope you can bring the same energy, ingenuity, and determination to the tasks facing you now, accompanied by a level of integrity that simply wasn’t necessary in your past life.

I hope you continue doing your best to speak for and champion the people who carried you to victory, but not that you ever begin pandering to the masses.

In essence, I hope you will be every bit as diligent and successful in fulfilling your present responsibilities as you were in acquiring them.

You replaced a terrible President, and prevented an even worse one. For those things alone, you start off with a certain leeway in my estimation. I hope you don’t squander it in ego and arrogance and short-attention-span dabbling.

Above all, I hope the next four years — or more — can be a time of recovery from the damage done to the United States by your predecessor and those carrying his water. For that matter, I hope recovery is possible. America is strong, but has never before been led by someone determined to destroy it (even if he called that destruction by a different name). If the only thing you accomplish is to expunge and eradicate everything that twerp did while in office, you will have my deep and earnest gratitude.

[Advance warning to prospective commenters: I don’t forbid disagreement, but I have no taste right now for being lectured. Mess with me beyond my patience, and I’ll just delete whatever you say that annoys me.]

Comments

[aadler]

We will see, one way or another. There’s a well-known quote that I only recently learned is attributed to Thomas Sowell: “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.” And yet, people will look at the exact same things and derive entirely different meanings from them. It’s enough to make one despair of any society ever working out in the long run, because mutually incompatible views of what reality is confounds the judgment even of people who have the same essential goals (the greatest possible good for the greatest number of persons) but can’t agree not only on the best means of achieving those goals, but even what ‘good’ truly is.

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who uses that very useful quote quite frequently. Usually, though, when someone is clearly expressing an opinion and insisting that because that's what they believe, it must be true. Unfortunately, in our current climate, ferreting out the actual facts from the "this is what I want you to believe happened" is trickier than ever before. It's difficult when it sometimes seems like we weren't watching the same thing, or hearing/reading the same words. Or are even on the same planet. :) You've got your actual facts that are hard to dispute (although may well be anyway), you've got your reported "facts" heavily slanted to provide a particular impression, and you've got blatant lies (AKA "alternative facts" in some circles). The best we can do is hope for, as you say, enough people with the same essential goals to be able to reach compromises about how to reach them.

[aadler]

‘Alternative facts’ is actually a term familiar to lawyers, and not for the purpose of obfuscating or misrepresenting the truth. It refers to things that can modify the understanding of a situation or present a legitimate alternate interpretation.

It’s a fact that one of my military discharge papers lists my blood type as B-positive. It’s a fact that one of my 8th-grade report cards shows my name as ‘David’. Both those things are facts. Here’s another fact: both those documents were wrong. I remember them entirely because they were wrong, and the alternative fact that they were wrong — that there are other (and many more) documents attesting that my blood type and name are entirely different from represented therein — isn’t a blatant lie but a different set of facts that clarifies the original set of facts.

‘Alternative facts’, then, isn’t a transparent label for open dishonesty, but a term with actual and valid meaning. The misunderstanding of it as such — among many other things — shows some of the difficulty that both you and I have addressed, in finding common ground with people whose worldviews differ so fundamentally.

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

Presenting something that is incorrect as an "alternate fact" does not, in fact, make it no longer incorrect. Just because it's lawyerese, doesn't mean the term isn't being used to obfuscate or hide the truth. That's what lawyers do. They would love for you to believe an alternate fact is just as valid as the actual, you know, FACT. And very few non-lawyers are going to do anything but howl with laughter when they see that used to describe something that falls somewhere between an unfortunate misstatement and a blatant lie. So many of these whoppers - about things we saw or heard for ourselves - could so easily be smoothed over with a simple "oops, I was wrong" or even "grabbed the wrong paper to read". I wouldn't have that man's job for all the tea in China. (and I drink a lot of tea...)

It is a fact that those two papers of yours said those things, the information itself was not factual. Other documents that give the correct information are the ones stating the actual (not alternate) facts.

Sorry to have started this discussion. Not that you are being ugly or anything, but I come to LJ to get away from the unfortunate truth that I am living in a very different realty from some of the people I know and like. (not many, mind you, but some) I'd rather just hang out here and go la,la,la and hope that I can still recognize the world in a few years.