I don't know whether to call this the quote of the day, the quote of the month, or the quote of the year, but I think what Bill Quick says here is brilliant:

A free and healthy democracy cannot function when it has no way to determine reality.

While Quick's focus is on the "corrupt, degenerate, dangerous mass media" which made it happen, I think that academia -- especially post-Modernist deconstructionism -- has played a large role with their decades-old war on reality. The idea that there is no reality, that instead there are only competing realities, means that whatever version of the truth works for you is true.

Now, some religious people will tend to see a phrase like "the truth" and think in religious terms. Social conservatives often define morality in terms of absolute truths, and many of them define those who disagree as "moral relativists." I think this distorts the process further, because history does show that different societies and cultures -- including those squarely within the Western tradition -- have defined morality differently. Morality has a way of changing over time. I worry that seeing morality as absolute truth makes it more difficult to focus on regular, factual truth -- such as what happened on, say, September 11, 2001.

That there are such people as 9/11 Truthers, and that there is a well organized movement of them, is something I find deeply disturbing. People like that see truth as driven by what they want to be true, and to them, facts play a subordinate role.

Bill Quick's post was about the polls (which was why Glenn linked it), and the polls of course are all over the map -- which means they cannot possibly all be right. What this means is that depending on your preferences, you can seize upon whatever poll you want, or claim quite credibly that because they're so sloppy, none of them can be relied on.

Still, there's an old political saying that "the only poll that counts is the one on Election Day."

Shouldn't that be reassuring? Won't there be, um, "closure" after the results are in, no matter who wins?

In view of the ferocious, conspiracy-driven relativism that seems poised to supersede traditional ways of determining reality, I'm worried that no matter who wins, his victory will not be seen as real by large numbers of highly partisan people. People on both sides who believe that even numerical truth is whatever they and the people they surround themselves with want it to be.

Bush did not win in 2000, nor did he win in 2004. McCain will not win in 2008. Obama will not win in 2008.

According to the new truth, whoever wins will not have won.

What was once a free and healthy democracy will have lost.

If this looks depressing, sorry. I really should be more cheerful. Maybe I should shift to satire mode.

I should always keep in mind that the people who disagree with me have their realities, and I have mine, and what I say here is just a result of my cultural bias. And since someone else's realities are just as valid as my own, then reality is like, you know, a democracy. It's not up to me to determine it. I have to bow to the reality of the majority.

I should acknowledge that if there is no way to determine reality or truth, I can hardly expect to stumble across it in a blog post, or know it if I see it. And certainly I can't be blamed for thinking what I think.

That's right! If I think something is true, it is a product of my cultural conditioning, and absolutely not my fault.

I probably just need to be reeducated.

(Oh hell, they can just buy me off with truth serum....)

MORE: Via an email from M. Simon, I just learned about an interesting ad campaign advising people to vote twice!

They even have a button to go with it:

If there are multiple realities, I see no problem with multiple voting. I mean it's like if I feel twice as strongly as you about something, then shouldn't my vote count twice as much?

To not allow me to vote according to the views of my conscience would be disenfranchisement!