For Arendt, facts and opinions, “though they must be kept apart, are not antagonistic to each other; they belong to the same realm.” A fact (her example is Germany’s invasion of Belgium in August 1914) “acquires political implications only by being put in an interpretative context.” Whoever reports what happened, she wrote, “always tells a story, and in this story the particular facts lose their contingency and acquire some humanly comprehensible meaning.”

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That is what Arendt meant when she argued that organizing people together to change the world—that is to say, doing politics—requires an approach that rejects outright lying while also avoiding a complacent expectation that “the truth” will reveal itself for voters to follow. The narrative wars have begun. If Democrats are smart, they’ll opt for storytelling instead.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    If Democrats can stick to the story they told, are telling and are repeating … they’ll keep winning

    I’m not saying this as some right wing nut job … I’m a socially supporting Canadian that fully supports the NDP, the left leaning party here in Canada. Always have and always will.

    The problem I always see with our left leaning parties is that they keep promising things before the election and then ramp up the hope when they get elected and then spend the next few years hovering at the level of hope and either get little done or none at all. And it’s always the powers that be, the status quo and monied interests that get in the way. It pervades all of politics with every party (no matter if they are left, center or right) because at the end of the day, its easy to control a political party and a politician simply by threatening their chances of getting re-elected again in the next election.