Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Name
Professor’s name
Unit code
Date
Alternative truth
The most recent phrase to be included in the Oxford dictionary is “fake news” a term that
is commonly used by the United States president, Donald Trump. Fake news refers to
information that is manufactured to influence people and their opinion about something. It can be
said that the phrase is false or in other words, it is in an alternative truth. The latter refers to data
and information that can lead to illusion and misperception. Genuinely, there can be no
alternative truth as there is only one side of an event that conforms to the truth and not the
purported alternative truth which can be termed as falsehood. But, in politics which heavily rely
on the media, the truth can be twisted to yield certain expectations and produce particular results.
The public is the one that is sandwiched between what is the truth and what is the alternative
truth while the politicians and the media ride on the general perception portrayed by the
alternative truth and the intentional manipulation or message. In this paper, alternative truth and
its impact will be broadly illustrated and a conclusion drawn on whether alternative truth is good
for the growth and development of democracy in the United States government.
Surname 2
Magicians and painters devise clever tricks that make human beings experience things
that are not real as they rely on cognitive and perceptual errors that human beings make on a
daily basis. In political platforms, misdirection together with deception is two core concepts that
politicians use to achieve a particular living. Politics all over the world is marred with
irregularities that are geared towards winning the public opinion. In the United States, the same
has happened over the years, and it has been used to win votes and hearts of the people.
Politicians highly depend on altered truths to win elections, and they do not care what such truth
may do to someone’s image (Fish). Most of the politicians have families whom they care, and
they also have people who look up to them for inspiration and motivation. Some altered truths
may dent an image of a politician, and in the end, the country may end up voting for the
governor, senator, and even the president. Propaganda is another term for alternative truth, and
from experience, political scenes have various propagandas that confuse the public (Parmar).
This propaganda is driven towards a specific motive that may influence a massive chunk of
voters. As expected, propaganda is not friendly and can make someone look ugly in the eyes of
the public and attract a lot of hate. Unhealthy alternative truths, commonly referred to as
propaganda in the political scenes have seen to dent the image of very prominent people.
However, it is tough to know what is the truth and what is propaganda as the public as
brainwashed to believe that a particular politician is dirty and unworthy of an elective seat. Over
the years, United States citizens have been fed with alternative truths, and it has been hard for
them to tell the real truth. Based on this propaganda, the country has ended up having the wrong
leaders in some of the elective positions. Unworthy leaders have always been a stumbling block
Our image and picture of what is a real change when people learn something emergent
about our world. Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientists to ever live, showed to the world
that physics of Aristotelian could not be termed as absolute truth. Quantum physics and
relativistic physics, in turn, superseded the physic from Isaac Newton. Every discovery that
human beings have made about physics following Isaac Newton’s has brought them nearer to
capitalized and absolute truth. But, there is a possibility that there will be new and unpredicted
observations in the future that will topple down and defile the accepted wisdom from all the
theories derived by our predecessors. In science, it is tough to verify any given hypothesis by
using data, but one contradictory observation is capable of refuting a scientific view. In other
words, it is hard to prove any hypotheses to be true but can be proven false by one contradictory
In a recent political event in the United States, during Donald’s Trump inauguration, the media
spread pictures of the number of people that attended this event. From these circulating on social
media and mainstream media, it was crystal clear that only a few people participated in this
Day Of Ceremony, Protests, And Celebration"). However, Donald Trump blamed the media for
circulating fake pictures of the ceremony and depriving the public of the truth. The president’s
hypothesis about the number of people that had attended the ceremony was only possible from
his point of view and from where he was standing on the dais. Trump might have thought that
the number of people and the size of the crowd was huge and stretched further to the National
Mall. There is also a possibility that the president also lied because it is hard to refute what was
seen from the pictures. But, for a hypothesis to survive there has to be sufficient data to support
it, and from this, the aerial photographs told it all (Knight, and Tsoukas). The white asserted that
Surname 4
the crowd was the biggest in history, but from the evidence provided, that was an alternative
truth and a false hypothesis. Therefore, from evidence, it is hard to come up with alternative
truths to lure the public to believe in fake information. As seen from the scenario mentioned
above, it is almost impossible to come up with alternative truths in certain situations if the
evidence contradicts what some people, which in this case the politicians, may assert is true. It is
therefore expected of the public to heavily rely on evidence just like the scientists do to know
Based on a human being neural wiring, it is impossible for people to see or think in
absolute dimensions. For instance, the eye cannot count photons like a light meter. Humans
understand the world based on their convictions and what might be white for you may be black
for another person. The perception of a person depends on perspective and context in which
certain information is passed. One of the most recent political agenda by the Donald’s Trump
administration was to build a wall that separates the United States from Mexico, to stop illegal
migration. During his campaigns, the president had clearly stated that Mexico would finance the
wall. However, until of late, it has been realized that the Mexican government is not capable of
financing the wall because it does not work under the jurisdiction of the United States
government. Many Trump supporters bought this, and they knew that Mexicans were to fund the
wall and therefore they would not be burdened with hefty tax due to the massive amounts of
funds that are needed to erect the wall across the border. Based on perception, some people
would have thought that building the wall was possible but could not be financed by the
Mexicans ("Opinion | Trump’S Wall Of Shame"). But due to a false illusion created by Donald
Trump, many supporters believed that they were not going to pay for the wall until of all late
when some of the Trump supporters started making contributions towards the building of the
Surname 5
wall. From this scenario, it is clear that someone’s perception can create an alternative truth that
The paper has explored alternative truth and how it has affected democracy, the rule of
law and many things in the political arena. Hypotheses have been created by people in
government to make the public believe in absolute truths. Propaganda has been formulated by
politicians to garner support to win elective positions and finally, based on perception; politicians
have managed to brainwash the public to support specific government projects. The facts
mentioned above are essential as they help us understand why it is important to dig deeper into
some facts before giving someone support. Is there another way that one can use to identify the
References
2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/us/politics/donald-trump-inauguration.html.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/opinion/trump-wall-shutdown.html.
Fish, Will. "“Post-Truth” Politics And Illusory Democracy". Psychotherapy And Politics
Knight, Eric, and Haridimos Tsoukas. "When Fiction Trumps Truth: What ‘Post-Truth’ And
Parmar, Inderjeet. "US Presidential Election 2012: Post-Truth Politics". Political Insight, vol 3,