PART SEVEN
THE DISAMBIGUATION OF ‘TRUTH,’ ‘FACT,’ AND ‘OPINION’
Americans often hear the refrain that, “everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but they are not entitled to their own facts.” The quip, recited with some variation, is attributed to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY). Senator Moynihan, who died in 2003, served in the U.S. Senate from January 1971 through January 2001, and served, as well, as an advisor to the Republican President, Richard M. Nixon.As with many quips, Moynihan’s, too, has become, through time, an ivy-covered adage—an adage that one is expected to accept on faith as a weighty, profound truth. That would explain its continuing popularity, especially among Congressional Democrats. They recite it to refute statements of Congressional Republicans or of the U.S. President, Donald Trump. Moynihan’s quip then serves as a convenient “sound bite,” a shorthand denunciation of any statement coming from a Congressional Republican or from the U.S. President that they happen to take exception with as if the falsehood of any statement coming from those that Democrats disagree with is so obvious that no evidence is required to support their denunciation of it.The problem is that “facts”—if there are such things at all—tend to be pliable, flexible things, no less so than opinions. Facts are represented colloquially as kinds of entities that are “out there” in the aether, and, so, do not emanate from or exist in a person. Supposedly, people make assertions about facts, and those assertions are either true or false, predicated on whether, according to a couple of epistemological theories, the assertions “cohere with” or “correspond to” particular “facts.” The presumption is, then, that facts are infallible as they do not rest on one’s belief or opinion about them. That is the point of Moynihan’s quip. The problem is that, if “facts” are “out there,” a person really cannot ever retrieve them, for a person can never pierce the veil of his or her own perceptions. Facts, if there are such things, are not, generally the sort of things we can get to. The best that can be hoped for is that corroborating evidence—which are really nothing more than beliefs and opinions ostensibly resting on another fact or set of facts, and so on ad infinitum—serves to establish the truth or falsity of a person’s statement and that, through such corroboration, a consensus is reached, at some point, among the language speakers of a given community, as to convincing truth or falsity of a given statement.Sometimes consensus is readily achieved. At other times it is not.Consider the statement, “Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, appointed Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate, among other things, ‘any links and/or coordination between the Russian Government and individuals associated with the campaign of Donald Trump.’” That is a statement, the truth or falsity of which is determinative to the extent the statement coheres with or corresponds to or correlates with or, let us say, “mirrors” a “fact” about the world—namely whether there exists a person named Rod Rosenstein, who is, at the moment at least, a Deputy Attorney General within the Department of Justice, and that he appointed a person, Robert S. Mueller III, as Special Counsel to head a team to investigate certain matters pertaining to the Presidential campaign of Donald Trump.We say the statement is true, if it is the case that the statement coheres with or corresponds with or--let us say--correlates with or mirrors a particular “fact” or "set of facts" about the world. Well, an astute person, who has been keeping abreast of news reports knows that Rod Rosenstein does exist and that he is the Deputy Attorney General and that he did appoint a person, Robert Mueller, as Special Counsel, and that Robert Mueller has been given his appointment and specific instructions through “Order Number 3915-2017.” So, we would say that the statement is, first of all, the kind of thing that is a truth bearer--that is to say--it is the kind of thing that can be ascertained to be either true or false. Since the statement does correspond to or cohere with or mirror a particular set of facts about the world, we say that the statement is true, and there is certainly public consensus on that. So far, no problem. But ostensible matters of fact and statements purporting to be about matters of fact get interesting and out of whack very quickly.Consider, for example, the statement, “the Mueller appointment as Special Counsel was justified.” In asserting a justification for something, one is moving away from statements about facts. One is moving away from descriptive statements or accounts about the world—statements subject to corroboration. We are, instead, making prescriptive statements about the way the world ought to be. Counterfactual statements, as the term, ‘counterfactual,’ suggests, do not purport to say anything about the world at all. This is where Moynihan’s quip loses efficacy and poignancy, where it loses steam. For, statements about the way the world ought to be do not lend themselves to corroboration. There is no readily obtainable fact or set of facts to turn to ascertain the truth or falsity of the statement.The problem is that politicians, as with most people, do not distinguish between descriptive accounts about the world--the way the word is--and prescriptive or normative assertions about the way the world is supposed to or ought to be. They believe, wrongly, that descriptive statements about the way the world is and prescriptive or normative statements about the way the world ought to be or should be are both factual—subject to corroboration, verification in the world.The public begins to ask questions, for example: "was the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate Donald Trump justified? If not, then what lay behind the appointment?" And, "if appointment of Special Counsel was justified, was Robert Mueller the best person for the job?" But, the answers obtained, and the conclusions drawn, are muddied through one’s personal biases and predilections—those things internal to the person. This is where truth or falsity of statements, grounded in purported “facts,” becomes fuzzy.Now, going back to Moynihan’s clever remark, we find that a person who believes the quip has efficacy might say that there are indeed, "hard, cold concrete facts" “out there” concerning the appointment of Robert Mueller and concerning various other matters, interrelated, going all the way back to the FBI handling of the investigation of Hillary Clinton for serious crimes against the Nation and against the American people and that, once a person gets to the bottom of it all, the truth can be ascertained and sorted out because there is only one fact or set of facts in the world for each and every proposition about the world. Well, if one sets forth descriptive statements about these matters, then, there would reasonably be a consensus about them as this would simply amount to an exercise of lining up, one-by-one, each descriptive statement with a concrete "fact" existent in the world upon which the truth of the statement is based.But, sorting out the propositions—a very large number of them and associating each of them in a one-to-one correspondence with or coherence with a specific fact—is exceedingly difficult, no less so because the American citizenry doesn’t have and cannot gain access to all the underlying information.Unfortunately, many politicians don’t want the American people to have access to the underlying information nor, for that matter, to any information about the inner workings of the Federal Government, upon which their lives may be deleteriously impacted because that would shed light on the machinations of senior officials in Government who have likely engaged in illegal actions. What are the illegal actions of these senior officials? Well, we suspect that they used the power of their Office to give Hillary Clinton an edge or boost against Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election, and we suspect that they have engaged in illegal actions to oust Donald Trump from Office upon his prevailing in the U.S. Presidential election against Clinton. Politicians give seemingly plausible reasons for precluding the average American citizen from gaining access to such information. They raise issues of national security. They talk about the need to protect confidential sources and to safeguard intelligence gathering methodology. Sometimes these seemingly plausible reasons are sound. Often, as in the matter of release of the House Intelligence Committee Memo, they are not. They are simply clichés offered up to hide the real reason for keeping the Memo hidden: to prevent the American citizenry from learning of illegal machinations behind the scene that upend the entire Democratic election process. They suggest that, due to Russian meddling, which they insist Americans accept without proffering any proof to support the assertion, Clinton would have won the election--a conclusion that doesn't follow from the premise that the Russians did interfere with our elections, even if the underlying premise is true. But, that conclusion, apparently, provides the impetus for and drives the action on multiple fronts to oust Trump from Office. Now, one may demur, arguing that the assertions set forth in this article are themselves mere unsubstantiated opinion. But are they? Are they not declarative assertions that can be substantiated, through release of the House Intelligence Committee Memo? Surely, the truth--or falsity for that matter--of the assertions made here can be substantiated at least in part through release of the Memo. But, that isn't something the supporters of Clinton want, even if the public would finally be privy to the underlying basis for the Mueller investigation. No one on either of the political spectrum would refute that point, which explains why, on the one hand, Congressional Democrats and senior Officials of the DOJ and FBI, and those who supported Hillary Clinton's candidacy, among others, including publishers, editors and reporters of the mainstream media and left-wing news anchors and commentators, don't want the Memo released to the American public, and why, on the other hand, Congressional Republicans, and many rank and file FBI agents and rank and file DOJ attorneys, and American citizens who supported Trump, along with conservative news reporters and commentators do want the Memo released to the American public and unredacted.* They evidently know that the information set forth is true, and it is the truth that they cannot and will not abide. It is the truth that they are afraid of. For, it is the truth that illustrates for the American citizenry to see, indeed for the entire world to see--when that truth is held up to the light of day--that these individuals, these senior Officials of the FBI and DOJ, and these Congressional Democrats, such as Adam Schiff and Dianne Feinstein, are scoundrels, not deserving of respect of the people whom they claim to serve; whom they deign to serve, but whom they serve up as slaves to the lords whom they really serve--the internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist "elites" who seek to subordinate this Nation and its people to a new pan-world Order.If the Mueller investigation is a sham, then, presumptively, the motive behind the investigation operates, not to find evidence of wrong-doing on the part of Donald Trump or on the part of Trump Campaign Officials or members of Trump's Administration, but operates, rather, as a critical step leading up to impeachment. And, once again, no one would seriously contest the accuracy of that point either, which would explain why it is that, having failed to find evidence of a criminal conspiracy between anyone connected with Trump and the Russians--if ever there were grounds for surmising such conspiracy in the first place--Mueller and his team are not wrapping up the investigation but are exploring other avenues of investigation, namely obstruction of justice--to keep the sham going. Obstruction is, for Mueller and his team, a convenient "peg to hang a hat on," because "[i]n a broad sense, any offense negatively affecting government functions can be viewed as an obstruction against the administration of justice. For example, treason, sedition, perjury, bribery, escape, contempt, false personation, destruction of government property, and assault of a public official are crimes against the government. Moreover, as the number of governmental functions has increased throughout time, the number of statutory offenses penalizing obstructions of those functions likewise has increased. Many of these crimes have been clearly and distinctly set apart as separate offenses. . . ." "The Varying Parameters of Obstruction of Justice in American Criminal Law," 65 La. L. Rev. 49 (Fall 2004), by John F. Decker. Obstruction of Justice charges are, by their nature, open-ended matters--broad domains into which almost any wrongdoing or semblance of wrongdoing can be dropped. Of course if an obstruction of justice charge could ostensibly be lodged against Donald Trump or of any one or more people in his Campaign or in his Administration, one could certainly make the case that an obstruction of justice charge, among many others, could, reasonably, certainly, have been lodged against Hillary Clinton and against individuals who worked for her Campaign. And, if obstruction of justice charges were not lodged against Hillary Clinton and others who worked for or on behalf of her when, notwithstanding that all of the elements of multiple obstruction of justice charges were met, then why wasn't Clinton and any of her people charged with obstruction of justice? If those members of the FBI who were involved in the investigation of Hillary Clinton on multivarious federal charges did not bring charges against her specifically because they did not wish to disrupt her campaign for the U.S. Presidency, then, one might well ask whether those investigators of the FBI involved had not themselves obstructed justice. But, who would charge them? And, imagine for a moment that Hillary Clinton did prevail in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election against Donald Trump. Imagine a likely criminal occupying the highest Office in the Land. Imagine a system of laws in this Nation turned on its head. Imagine Harlequin Justice and a Harlequin U.S. President: Hillary Clinton. The conclusion we draw is that an attempted coup of our Constitutional Republic is underway. The contents of the House Intelligence Committee Memo will certainly lend credence to that conclusion. That is why there has been considerable push-back against release of the Memo to the public. The Conspirators don't want an accounting. They don't want a reckoning. Thus, they come up with specious reasons to waylay release of the Memo. What the American public is witness to is a deliberate and reprehensible attempt--assembled by actors in Congress, in the Federal Bureaucracy, and in the Mainstream Media, with likely assistance from Billionaire globalists both here at home and abroad to undermine the Trump Presidency.Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA), House Intelligence Committee Chairman, seeks to redress this horrific situation that bad actors have inflicted on our Country and continue to inflict on our County and that is why he ordered preparation of a Memorandum detailing DOJ and FBI surveillance abuse and misuse of the FISA Court by senior Officials of the DOJ and FBI. These abuses involve presenting the FISA Court with an application for issuance of a warrant to enable the FBI to conduct surveillance of American citizens. If the application were submitted with evil intent, with knowledge that the presenters had that the content of the application was patently false or that the content had not been corroborated for veracity and if those presenters of the FBI and DOJ represented to the FISA Court that the content of the application for a FISA warrant was true, then those presenters of the FBI and DOJ perpetrated a fraud on the Court. That is reprehensible. That is unforgivable. And that, apparently, is precisely what happened. That is what prompted Representative Nunes to order preparation of the Memo, for release to the American citizenry. The legal authority for him to do so is based on the Committee’s function and job:“The United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) is a committee of the United States House of Representatives, currently chaired by Congressman Devin Nunes (California). Created in 1977, HPSCI is charged with oversight of the United States Intelligence Community—which includes the intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the following seventeen elements of the U.S. Government—and the Military Intelligence Program.”The HPSCI is tasked with oversight of powerful institutions—seventeen institutions that, in a free Republic, cannot be trusted to police themselves. Representative Nunes became frustrated, and rightfully so, by DOJ and FBI recalcitrance in responding to Committee concerns.The DOJ and FBI must answer to the American people through their Representatives in Congress. Apparently, the DOJ and FBI don’t see it that way. Congressional Democrats, like Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein—who have been most vocal in their denunciation of the House Intelligence Committee Memo—don’t see it that way either. You would think that all members of Congress would be aghast at unethical conduct, arising to the level of crimes—serious crimes at that—that senior Officials of the DOJ and FBI, had likely committed against the Nation and against the American people. But, Representatives Schiff and Pelosi and Senator Feinstein don’t want the public to have access to the contents of the Memo. Apparently, neither does the mainstream media that has come out of the shadows itself on the topic, which it had previously ignored, and no longer can do so, and, so, reluctantly reports it.Why is it that Representatives Schiff and Pelosi, and Senator Feinstein don’t want the public to have access to the contents of the Memo? What is it that senior Officials and Congressional Democrats are fearful of? Are they afraid that the contents of the Memo do not correspond with or cohere with facts, as they claim, and that, the public therefore should not gain access to a document that portrays senior Officials of the DOJ and the FBI in a false light, damning them for illegal conduct these senior Officials of the DOJ and the FBI never engaged in? Or, rather, is it because these Senior Officials of the DOJ and FBI and these Congressional Democrats are afraid that the contents of the Memo do clearly correspond with or cohere with facts “in the world” and that the contents of the Memo do rightfully damn these individuals for betraying their Oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution. If the latter, then one need not wonder as to the concern of Congressional Democrats and the concern of high-ranking Officials in the Federal Bureaucracy over the contents of the Memo, and why it is they remonstrate against the Memo’s release. For, these holders of high rank in Government, who wield incredible power, and whom the public is expected to trust, and who are expected to utilize the power of their Office circumspectly, and whom, the public—so it is told—have the utmost integrity, would be exposed for the frauds that they are, and would, themselves, be investigated for crimes against this Nation and against the American people. Moreover, it is clear enough, although no one publicly acknowledges it, that, once President Trump does allow for the release of the House Intelligence Memo to the American public, there will be a ripple effect that calls into question the legitimacy of the entirety of the Mueller investigation. And, the ripple effect does not end there. The public will obtain an inkling as to depth of and complexity of the conspiracy against the U.S. President and, by extension, the depth of and complexity of the conspiracy against the American people. The American public will rightfully demand an accounting of these high-ranking Officials, including a demand for an accounting of Congressional Democrats who protect these Federal Bureaucrats who flagrantly violate the laws of the Land—senior police officials and senior attorneys, whom one would think would have the utmost respect for our laws, but who obviously don't.The reasons Congressional Democrats give for preventing release of the Memo to the American public cloaks a normative argument that is not subject to true/false verification. These Congressional Democrats and the senior Officials who both betray their Nation and its people have a vision for this Nation that cannot be reconciled with the vision that President Trump and much of the American citizenry have for this Country. These Congressional Democrats and senior Officials of the DOJ and FBI and many senior Officials of the Federal Bureaucracy wish to create a Nation that is subordinated to a new pan-World Order; a Nation with open borders; a Nation open to disparate multicultural influences; a Nation suffering the fragmenting of core values; a Nation witnessing the disassembling of fundamental rights and liberties; and a Nation that sees an expansion and consolidation of power in the Federal Government with ultimate transfer of power to international Governing bodies. Clearly, these senior Officials of the DOJ and FBI that wield incredible power have little regard for the American people. And, those members of Congress who protect and enable the illegal conduct of these Officials are no better. Indeed, they are all complicit in the assault on our Constitution and complicit in the illegal effort to destroy the Trump Presidency. These Senior Officials of the DOJ and FBI feel they can spurn our laws because they presume they know what is in the best interests of the American people. They create ad hoc rules of behavior for themselves as they deem themselves to be superior to the public. They demonstrate contempt for the citizenry. Their behavior amounts to crass, unabashed paternalism. The Founders of our Republic would be appalled. You should be appalled too. The American citizenry must demand an accounting. Perhaps, with release of the House Intelligence Committee Memo, there now will be an accounting.______________________________________________*As this article goes to publication, the Arbalest Quarrel has learned that U.S. President, Donald Trump, has authorized release of the House Intelligence Committee Memo, and, apparently, in unredacted form, which means that Americans should see the names of those high-ranking Officials in the FBI and DOJ, who have betrayed the trust of the citizenry of this Nation. These individuals of "Justice" must be brought to justice themselves. Once the Memo is released to the public, the Arbalest Quarrel will analyze it and post the results of its analysis on this site.______________________________________________Copyright © 2017 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.