I missed the Democrats’ debate yesterday, but it looks like Obama was guilty of a pleonasm. He said:
“There was a set of assertions made by Senator Clinton as well as her husband that are not factually accurate.”
Pray, sir, is there any other kind of “accurate”?
Or does my question reveal my own ignorance? We have read and heard about something called the “higher truth”. So is it possible that Obama was disputing only the factual accuracy of the Clintons’ comments and not denying they might be accurate on some other level? After all, he is a lawyer and lawyers choose their words carefully.
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I looked up Wikipedia — and, by Jove, Oscar Wilde was right, truth is anything but simple. Truth can be subjective, relative, objective, absolute. That begs the question, if there are so many notions of truth, is it possible at all to tell a lie? Not that I am going to lose any sleep over that question. As a Hindu, I am only too familiar with the idea that the world is an illusion — maya — but I am not ready to kick the bucket; let me live my lie.
Remember the words of Shakespeare:
… We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
I was reminded of my college days when we had to tackle Plato and Aristotle and the theory of mimesis.
According to Plato, apparently this computer I am writing on is the computer manufacturer’s idea of a computer, and therefore only an imitation of the real thing, which exists only in nature, and that is God’s idea of a computer. And when I try to describe my computer, I am presenting only an imitation of an imitation.
Truth is the concern of philosophers only, according to Plato, and not of poets, actors or orators.
Maybe that’s why Obama complained only of “factual” inaccuracy. He doesn’t expect the Clintons to be philosophers.
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