#13: It Doesn't Matter How Many Times You Say It, or How Many People Believe It, a Lie is Always a Lie

... and a Tiger Cannot Change Its Stripes

Until recently, I posted (almost) daily on LinkedIn. I might start up again, I might not. I’m just taking things one day at a time.

Each post title began with the word TRUTH followed by the post number. I’d deviate the format from time to time, but not often.

My TRUTH series started as a way for me to address the proverbial “pink elephants” in the room that we all see, but never discuss. My goal was to reveal the “truth of the matter” on the topic of the day. I explain more about this on the About page of this Substack.

Enter Lizzo

My LinkedIn journey was going well until I posted about the irony of Lizzo playing James Madison’s crystal flute and thinking history was “so cool” and that she was “feeling good as hell” afterwards.

Here is the text of my post:

HELP ME UNDERSTAND ...

Lizzo just played James Madison's crystal flute, on loan from the Library of Congress, and said it was very cool and a history making moment.

[And I included a link to the following article: https://people.com/music/lizzo-plays-historic-220-year-old-crystal-flute-owned-by-president-madison/]

That’s it … that was the post ….

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Just a few weeks before Lizzo played this flute, she used part of her speech at the VMA awards to advocate fans to vote against “all of those laws that are oppressing us.”

Really?

• What laws are those, Lizzo?

• And, how are they oppressing “us”?

• Who is “us”?

• Multi-millionaire celebrities?

Lizzo is a professionally trained flautist with access to an iconic piece of material culture and a bank account I could only dream of.

She, my friends, is not oppressed.

My post, and I believe appropriately so, suggested it was curious that Lizzo was playing this particular flute since its owner, James Madison, owned over 100 slaves.

Unless, I am mistaken, Lizzo was …

» playing the flute of a white supremacist …

» playing the flute of the Father of the Constitution, which Constitution Lizzo’s politics of oppression demand is incapable of producing equity for black Americans …

» selectively cancelling him in his role as a Founder (all founders are necessarily white supremacists), but celebrating the things he owned and even calling history “cool”?

The irony continues …

Madison was not only the Father of the Constitution, but he was also the chief author of the Bill of Rights, and thus the First Amendment. He was an unmitigated champion for religious liberty, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech.

As an artist, is not the First Amendment the most important protection Lizzo has against compelled speech?

In the words of Alanis Morrissette …

Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?

A little too ironic, and yeah I really do think.

More on Madison

James Madison, a founding father (he was a Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress, co-author of the Federalist Papers, and author of the Virginia Plan - a proposal for how to structure the federal government), graduate of Princeton (formerly College of New Jersey), and the 4th President of the United States, was a complex man who held complex views on slavery.

He grew up on a plantation with scores of slaves and naturally believed they were property, or non-persons, but he understood, at least intellectually, that a society dependent upon slavery was unstable and unsustainable.

Madison, like every other human, was an imperfect man and at times difficult to understand through a 21st century lens, but that’s the case for every past generation. Nonetheless, we judge them even though we don’t understand them. In fact, we don’t even make the effort to understand them, or the times in which they were alive.

According to the Bradley Commission on History in Schools (1989), “human beings need a sense of self, a sense of how they got where they are in order to understand and evaluate where they are going next … Through the study of the past, individuals are empowered to develop a more informed way of seeing, knowing, and coping with the larger human society in which they live.”

We’ve been ignoring this reality for a century … will we continue to ignore it for another?

Photo of Madison’s Montpelier in Orange, Virginia (present day)

And circa 1860 - 1920.

Irrespective of one’s approval or disapproval of Madison, and whether justified or unjustified, he is an extremely important figure in American history. He had an enormous influence on our Constitution, the establishment of the government it creates, and the fundamental rights it is designed to protect.

Back to Lizzo

At the time I posted it, my Lizzo post was climbing in views and, until a few months ago, was my highest performing post. Initially, the comments were in celebration of Lizzo and her public stance on body positivity.

But that was short lived.

One of the late-comer commenters, a white female attorney, wrote that my post was racist.

Say what?

Racist, are you serious?

That’s a VERY serious allegation and bordering on defamatory as I see it.

According to Dictionary.com, a racist (noun) is a “person who believes in racism, the doctrine that one’s own racial group is superior or that a particular group is inferior to the others.” And, racist (adjective) is “of or like racists or racism.”

With that comment, like moths to a flame, the hive mind of critical race theorists (even though they have no idea what that actually means) exploded on my post.

Within hours, the “oppressed” and their “allies” deemed that my post wreaked of racism and white supremacy.

Whoa there, Nelly … back right up honey.

You DID NOT just go there, right?

Please, please tell me you were just joking.

But they weren’t.

They were spewing nonsense.

Plain and simple, they were lying.

The Scarlet O

To be clear … there was NOTHING racist or racialized about my post.

And to suggest otherwise is a lie.

No matter how many times one repeats it, or how many people believe it, it is still a lie, and always will be.

Fortunately, Dictionary.com helps us out again with a definition for the term “lie”.

A lie (noun) is “a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth.” It is also “something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture.”

In the verb context, to lie (used without an object) means “to speak falsely or utter an untruth knowingly, as with intent to deceive … to express what is false; convey a false impression.”

To state that my post was racist was a lie. It expressed something that is false and conveyed a false impression. It was not then, and is not now, true, correct, or factual.

Dictionary.com keeps helping us out … this time with a definition for the term “fact” as well.

A fact is “something that actually exists; reality; truth … something known to exist or to have happened.”

For the third time in as many months, white women lawyers lied about me and my content on a public platform. I’ve been called a racist, a white supremacist, and an intellectual bully. Before that, I was deemed an anti-choice fascist. I was developing a very distinguished pedigree!

I don’t know these women outside of a handful of LinkedIn exchanges, but I do know that - as attorneys - they absolutely know the difference between the truth and a lie.

So why all of the undisciplined accusations?

Enter Postmodernism

In the context of postmodern thought, truth and lies have no rational basis in thought. They are mere social constructs rooted solely in one’s experience as opposed to any objective reality, which is dismissed as naive realism.

Here’s a quick aside on postmodernism (the italics are used for ease of reading only).

Postmodernism is an intellectual theory that rejects the thought forms of modernism, such as rationality, reason, evidence, and science. It claims there is no such thing as a universal reality, or universal truth, about anything, thereby rejecting the concept of binary oppositions in every area of life.

Postmodernism both defies and rejects the three fundamental laws of logic, which were clearly articulated by the Ancient Greek Philosopher, Aristotle (384 - 322 BC).

The fundamental laws (or First Principles) are:

1. The law of contradiction,

2. The law of the excluded middle, and

3. The principle of identity.

The law of contradiction states it is impossible for P to be both P and not P at the same time. Nothing is both P and Not P.

The law of the excluded middle states that either P is true or false. There is no middle ground between being true or false. Everything is either P or Not P.

The principle of identity says that a thing is identical with itself, or the same as itself. So P is P. In more practical terms, a human is a human. It is not both human and non-human.

—

Back to the story ….

According to postmodern theory, there is no such thing as logic aka reason. Therefore, one cannot obtain knowledge through reason and evidence, one can only obtain knowledge through one’s personal experience.

There is no such thing as an outside, objective, stable body of valid propositions, or truths, that apply to all people, at all times. There is only what is created through experience as expressed in language. If I don’t experience it, I cannot know it.

Note - this is the baseline for the concept of standpoint theory - if I’m not black, I cannot know the black experience … if I’m not a woman, I cannot know the female experience. This is a huge component of critical social justice studies.

Back to the “I’m a Racist” Thing

By stating that my “veiled” attempt to insult Lizzo (their words, not mine) is racist, they are branding me with a Scarlett O, O for Oppressor. I am a white supremacist and thus, by my very existence, I am a member of the Oppressor class.

It’s akin to a billboard stating that I am playing for the wrong team, at least according to them … My O is my brand, my target.

This got me thinking, if I’m wearing the Scarlett O, are my lawyer accusers wearing a Scarlett A, A for Adulterer?

Are they, as allies, not committing adultery against their own thought forms based on logic, reason, and evidence?

Against their oaths of office?

Are they not turning their backs on their duty to uphold the Constitution, which protects individual liberty, not group identity?

Are they not cheating on their understanding that knowledge (at least in their day jobs) is obtained by means of reason and evidence, not personal experience, linguistic gymnastics and semantic summersaults?

Are they not cheating on reality by flirting a little too much with postmodern critical theories?

The answer is YES. Yes, they are.

They are adulterers, intellectual adulterers, the whole lot of them.

They work in one thought form by day (there is a rational world and we can know it through reason and evidence) and another by night (there is no rational world or objective reality and we can only know anything through language and experience).

They are two-timers.

They cheat on themselves and what they know deep down to be true.

But why?

Why are they so easily seduced into this intellectual garbage?

Perhaps for the same reasons I was 30 years ago.

It all sounds so good on paper … and, if we don’t know why we believe what we believe, i.e. why the world is round, or that you don’t fly when you jump off of a building, we are vulnerable to the charismatic and intoxicating ideas of others that tap into and then manipulate our innate sense of the need for fairness.

As the adage goes … you’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything!

It’s time to stand for what we know is true and know is right. As every good lawyer knows, the best offense is a good defense.

A Lie is Always a Lie

You can say that my content is racist a million times. And a million people can believe it. But it’s not true.

It’s a lie and always will be. Something cannot be both true and untrue at the same time.

Lizzo can say there are “all of those laws that are oppressing us” a million times. And a million people can believe it. But it’s not true.

It’s a lie and always will be. Again, something cannot be both true and untrue at the same time.

O is for Original

If I am to wear a Scarlett O, I will do so proudly. I am not an Oppressor because the concept of Oppressors and Oppressed arises from garbage theory that has no foundation, consistency, or constancy.

But I am an Original, and so are you.

Wear your O proudly … and know that you are not cheating on yourself and what you know. You are not crazy, you are what we celebrate in America … an original.

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Back soon with much more.

Meanwhile, Happy Independence Day … !

xo,

Kelley

July 3, 2023