Ursula K. Le Guin

You are currently browsing articles tagged Ursula K. Le Guin.

“It Is Either Deeply Dishonest Or Unhinged From Reality, Or Both”

November 28, 2017 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Far worse than Pee Tapes are coming, I would wager.

Many who were friends with Jeffrey Epstein, as our sitting President and a past one were, likely engaged in a relationship with him to share in his depraved acts. The convicted child predator/science patron was known to hide cameras and microphones in all corners of his dens of inequity, just in case he should ever need a Get Out Of Jail Free card. That’s not Trump’s only problem. His Russian comrades may have also been shining a light on his private behaviors, which, if the stories of his 16 alleged victims and his first wife’s court testimony are any indication, may have been incredibly far beyond the pale.

In advance of what may soon be coming to a screen near you, the orange supremacist has begun amping up his nihilistic obliteration of objective truth, casually mentioning that the Access Hollywood tape, which would have been the coup de grâce for his disgraceful campaign in any decent country, is somehow fake news. It’s the assertion of an evil dictator or a mentally ill madman or a jacked-up drug addict or all three, but that isn’t the chief problem. The main heartbreak is that we’re now a country in which tens of millions will believe his obvious bullshit, as surely as many in Alabama believe Roy Moore’s. We’ve become estranged from reality on a mass scale.

The novelist and scientist’s daughter Ursula K. Le Guin has become worried over the increasingly blurred lines between fiction and nonfiction. “You’re encouraged to follow the ‘truth’ instead of the facts,” she’s said, but I think it’s worse than that: You’re encouraged to believe the lies that suit you, regardless of the consequences.

From David A. Graham’s Atlantic article “Trump’s Rejection of Observable Reality“:

The White House’s stance is that all 16 women who have accused Trump of sexual improprieties, harassment, or assault are lying. Trump’s old position on the Access Hollywood tape was that he was lying. The view he now apparently holds privately is that the tape itself is lying.

But the tape is authentic. Trump acknowledged as much when it was revealed, and apologized for his words (though not to the women upon whom he boasted about preying) while claiming that he had not actually done the things he bragged about having done. Billy Bush, the television host with whom he was speaking on the tape (and who, unlike Trump, lost his job simply for not reacting with disgust to the comments) also acknowledged it was real.

In short, the suggestion that it was not Trump on the tape is either deeply dishonest or unhinged from reality, or both. While Trump lies with abandon, and has done so throughout his career, this is a particularly curious case, one where not only is there no real dispute about reality, but in fact documentary evidence in the form of a recording of Trump discussing the acts himself.•

Tags: , ,

“Lies Are Seldom Completely Harmless, And Often Very Dangerous”

February 2, 2017 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Fake news is a term that only recently entered the vernacular with the 2016 Presidential election, but Fox News has been selling just that for more than 20 years, overtly trying to imprison the truth inside a fog.

The GOP has headed further down this rabbit hole over time, but it buried itself–and the country, perhaps–with the rise of Trump, a candidate who ran a fact-free campaign. Traditional Republicans initially tried to distance themselves from the demagogue, fearing he would do long-term damage to their cause, but they had for decades prepped the party faithful for his arrival, peddling coded prejudice and bitter partisanship, even opportunistically embracing Tea Party nihilism.

After Trump’s unlikely Electoral College victory, his sociopathy and Steve Bannon’s Breitbart bigotry are looked at by some conservatives as less important than tax cuts for the highest earners and the slicing of social safety nets. Meanwhile, democracy itself hangs in the balance, as the White House attempts to destabilize truth and facts, things we must pursue earnestly and nobly if we’re to have a decent society.

Writer Ursula K. Le Guin weighed in on “alternative facts” in a letter to The Oregonian:

A recent letter in The Oregonian compares a politician’s claim to tell “alternative facts” to the inventions of science fiction. The comparison won’t work. We fiction writers make up stuff. Some of it clearly impossible, some of it realistic, but none of it real – all invented, imagined —  and we call it fiction because it isn’t fact. We may call some of it “alternative history” or “an alternate universe,” but make absolutely no pretense that our fictions are “alternative facts.”

Facts aren’t all that easy to come by. Honest scientists and journalists, among others, spend a lot of time trying to make sure of them. The test of a fact is that it simply is so – it has no “alternative.”  The sun rises in the east. To pretend the sun can rise in the west is a fiction, to claim that it does so as fact (or “alternative fact”) is a lie.

A lie is a non-fact deliberately told as fact. Lies are told in order to reassure oneself, or to fool, or scare, or manipulate others. Santa Claus is a fiction. He’s harmless. Lies are seldom completely harmless, and often very dangerous. In most times, most places, by most people, liars are considered contemptible.

Ursula K. Le Guin, Northwest Portland•

Tags: