Kellyanne Conway successfully coined a phrase that will ensure her place in history.
It’s not clear what Donald Trump’s spokesperson intended by using the term ‘alternative facts’. But in a televised interview discussing the 2017 Presidential Inauguration she responded with ‘alternative facts’ to the general consensus that the attendance had not been high. Quick as a flash, the interviewer responded: ‘Alternative facts are not facts. They are falsehoods.’
Relative truth?
Conway had probably only meant that the disagreements over the numbers were based on incomplete evidence. What she meant by alternative facts were probably ‘additional’ facts or ‘ignored’ facts (though perhaps I am being generous here).
Comedy, free speech and warnings from the past
Hannah Arendt was a Jewish philosopher who grew up in Nazi Germany. Eventually she had to flee to France and, …