Politics and Reality

Denial of the truth can have deadly consequences. Unfortunately when we look at the current political landscape of the US there is one party, The Republican Party, that has dulled our ability to determine truth so much so that death is having to step in to make the final say. A perfect example of this is the difference in the number of covid deaths between Republicans and Democrats, its stark^[1]. 15% higher for Republicans post vaccine due to vaccine denialism. This isn’t the only instance of reality denial that the GOP participates in, far from it, and it's not even the most dangerous. 

A philosopher that understood the importance of the truth and devised a way to help us guide us in finding it was Maurice Merleau-Ponty. A fascinating aspect of his philosophy was his idea of how we interact with the world and it in turn interacted with us. To Merleau-Ponty our reality wasn’t just our perception, it wasn’t just the meaning we give to things in some arbitrary or even useful way. It also wasn’t necessarily what is thrust upon us by the externalities of the world. Instead it is a give and take between our consciousness, our physical body, and the world. In Phenomenology of Perception he says

“Whether or not I have decided to undertake the climb, these mountains appear large because they outstrip my body’s grasp and, even if I have just read Micromégas^[2], nothing I do can make them appear small.”

This very succinctly surmises the way Merleau-Ponty views reality. The mountain itself exists and is big in relation to our body, there is no changing that fact. However the beginning of the quote demonstrates how our consciousness comes into play. Where our freedom to engage with reality and take on projects is present. We are the ones who can decide whether we take on the task of climbing the mountain or not. Whether that climb has meaning to us, or whether it's not a climb to undertake but perhaps just a scenic view we can enjoy from our window.

Merleau-Ponty’s world didn’t just encompass physical objects, it encompassed other people. The creation of our reality heavily includes the perceptions, and preconceptions, of society and the people that inhabit that society. Much in the same way the mountain in relation to our body is this huge imposing structure that exists in our world, people’s preconceptions, beliefs, the way they move and the way they act, shape the reality we inhabit and this reality is the intersubjective world.

Merleau-Ponty lays out this idea of the intersubjective world.  A world where, even though we each may have our own subjective ideas and perceptions of the world (although these should all be relatively similar since we inhabit similar bodies and the same physical world), everyone at the end of the day comes together and we share those subjective perceptions to create the world we all inhabit and exist in together called the intersubjective world.

This can be a good or a bad thing depending on the intersubjective world we’ve created. A bad example of this is slavery in the U.S. The world we created then was one where black people were seen as property to be owned. Unfortunately as well in the same way the mountain outstrips our body and we cannot just decide to climb it, societal norms, preconceptions, and laws outstrip our body as well and determine the way we exist. Now, this isn’t to say that we can’t take on a project and change that intersubjective world to an extent. It just means that there needs to be an active effort to do so. In the same way we can take massive machinery to carve our way through the mountain to build railroad, we can undertake a project like the civil rights movement to change perceptions which change reality and work to create a fair society for everyone.

A Shattered Reality

The problem right now is that instead of one intersubjective world we all inhabit, we have shattered into at least two, if not more, hyper secluded political realities (at least in the U.S). These realities, as Merleau-Ponty lays out, aren’t just inaccurate perceptions, they are, functionally, realities. They determine how we engage with the world, what we think of people, how we determine laws, how we run our country, how we spend money, how we decide life and death choices.

Consider how the MAGA reality is developed.  Messaging starts at the top with Trump or one of his top officials/cabinet members then they disperse that down to the mainstream of Fox News, the alternative media personalities like Candice Owens, and then their every day influencers.Even Ashley St. Claire, a former MAGA micro influencer has reported on how group chats exist to disperse certain messaging from the top down, confirming this development of reality^[3]. Not only do you have the right-wing media and influencers spreading this reality, you have all of the cabinet members and House and Senate officials towing Trump’s line as well. From the auto-pen to 2020 election denial every single one of these branches of the MAGA media sphere is in lockstep. This reality is then fed by figures in the movement refusing to engage seriously with the opposing reality and instead opt for easy victories against unprepared college students per the likes of Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, and others. Worse, the pundits of the other reality provide little to no pushback. They're terrified of accusations of Trump Derangement Syndrome or perceived bias. Almost all of the interviews that are taken from perceived left of center media are just more areas where this reality is free to be propagated to the public. One of the most egregious examples to memory is of Kristen Welker doing the first television interview with Trump once he won the 2024 election^[4]. 

If we are to agree with Merleau-Ponty and how others are a part of shaping our reality, how is one supposed to exist in this context and make it out without falling prey to this level of dis/misinformation? Not to mention the social pressure from your friends, family and community if they all already subscribe to this reality, and the algorithms we’re all stuck in sink us down further

It’s difficult, and it takes deliberate strong correction.

Bringing Us Back Into A Shared Reality

The right in the U.S. (and even places like the U.K with Reform or AfD in Germany) has gone insane and the intersubjective world they have created for their constituency through secluded unchallenged bubbles like the Joe Rogan Experience, The Daily Wire, Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, Twitter, etc. is dangerous and divorced from a true reading of the intersubjective world that we inhabit and instead has been replaced by a constructed reality of conspiracies and lies. The constituency of these “thought leaders” and bubbles should be our aim for who we want to drag back into a proper intersubjective world. The politicians, pundits, and influencers should be largely ignored and treated as ideological and reality distorting enemies. Even if they themselves have fallen prey to the false reality the influence they hold and spread is too great and navigating around their even greater biases whether it be from their audience, ideology, or finances is too steep a task to be effective. Instead, aim to convince their audiences, viewers, voters, and social media followers.

The beacon of hope in this article is because for Merleau-Ponty there is a real, correct intersubjective world, or at the very least a more correct intersubjective world and a less correct one. It’s constructed by the give and take between the physical world and our bodies and consciousness and that give and take can only be obscured so much. We can take the physical evidences provided to us in the world, lay them out, and determine how to move forward in a true and accurate way.

To reach this more correct intersubjective world we must do as Merleau-Ponty posits. We must use the examples of where the world reaches out to us and our bodies reach out to the world. The opening example of covid deaths due to vaccine denialism is a good example of this give and take, unable to be obscured by abstract or convoluted conversations. Another great example of this undeniable interplay between our body and the world is the response to Hurricane Helene in 2024. During this time conspiracies spread by MAGA pushed many lies about FEMA causing people to refuse to evacuate, hinder rescue operations, and cost people lives^[5]; these were not the only issues either. There were reports of militias roaming around North Carolina threatening Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) agents due to these conspiracies^[6]. This forced agents to evacuate the county immediately preventing them from saving further lives. 

The consequences of these tragedies are tangible and visceral. Consequences that occurred because of inhabiting a reality that is far from the more correct intersubjective world that Merleau-Ponty thinks we should inhabit. There are other examples that we could point to and need to point to where obfuscation and lies are doled out in excess, that can be debunked through the likes of video, audio, and any number of other materials that we can engage with and contextualize. I would recommend though, at least initially, staying away from more abstract, complicated, and philosophical, as ironic as that is for this piece, arguments where MAGA thrives. These types of lies do eventually need to be addressed, however because they rely on more specific and in depth information, they're not as visceral and easy to expose. One of these being the corruption regarding the quid pro quo relating to immigration between the Trump administration and former Mayor Adams in New York. These examples are a type of “next step” in the process of correcting our intersubjective world to be more correct. 

My concern is that, as I said above, it takes deliberate strong correction. We can either have this correction happen soon and right the course that America is currently on or we can end up like Hungary or worse. The positive takeaway from the recent Hungarian elections is that Magyar was able to win in a landslide victory which is a major step towards dragging them back to a more correct reading of the intersubjective world. The negative takeaway is to look at Hungary and see just how much and how long it took to reach a point where truth and reality could no longer be denied. Is it going to take us getting to Hungary’s position of a pseudo democracy to snap us out of the MAGA farce where the support for reality has to be so overwhelming it is impossible to deny? Or can we do better? Or worse?

We must work to force mostly the right, although there are fringes on the left such as the Hasan Piker and The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) crowd, back into a shared reality. A more correct shared reality. Right now we have exploded out the intersubjective world into multiple instances and it is not sustainable. One as a matter of unity as a country and two as a matter of pragmatism and safety. We cannot continue to allow lies to spread. It causes chaos and harm to the public.

Our intersubjective world must be reconstituted. We must work at every opportunity to tear down the barriers between the two intersubjective worlds that exist between the political parties in the US. This ranges from hard challenging conversations when the opportunity arises or is forced. Clear messaging laced with concrete facts we can see, hear, touch, engage with and contextualize and most importantly a strong backbone for the truth of the intersubjective world we all inhabit.

If we do not take on the project to reestablish a sane intersubjective world rooted in a reality that is crying out to our senses then the right will continue to push their project of insane reality denialism or perhaps another more insane project will arise.

We need a strong democratic party in the U.S. full of pundits, politicians, and voices that are willing to forcefully, through words, grab us by the collar and drag us back into a proper intersubjective world. Not a party full of both sides’ers, capitulators and friendly interviewers who are too afraid of Trump Derangement Syndrome accusations to establish a true and prosperous intersubjective world.