is that you're being disloyal to party principles. There's always someone willing to hijack an existing organization for their own purposes and there always dumbasses who will buy into it.

Such a cruel question!

But you're being far too kind again.

I prefer truth, upon which loyalty might be fostered.

Loyalty to truth.

So meta.

if there was real progress and fighting behind it that would practically and substantially improve lives and opportunity for all, and the truthiness was in service to the reality of our needs, and simply another tool in a vast and effective arsenal.

Because truthiness is a sign of intellectual and cultural rot and any movement that depends on it cannot, in the end, be successful in pushing a liberal/progressive agenda which depends on an understanding of reality and the problems you're trying to solve and the solutions (including the limit of those solutions) you're considering.

Which is not to say I ever expect politicians to tell the entire truth or even most of the truth. But truthiness to me doesn't mean someone lying, it means the culture as a whole deciding to believe stories and narratives that are not true. Something every culture does to some extent (it's called history), but it's very dangerous when an entire society looks at a rock and decides it's a dog. And that's what we've been doing over and over again. As Somerby said in his critique of the RFK smear - you can't just make shit up. But we do and then the media reports it as true, when it's demonstrably false, and even though we all know or could know it's demonstrably false, we go along with the media narrative.

If the truthiness relies upon the exclusion of some facts, does it become a lie?

If the intent is to persuade another by putting forth the prettiest picture possible?

That ointment claiming to cure partisanship might just be of the shuckster variety.

Beware traveling salesmen in finely tailored suits!

Where there is no truth, there is only a mindless cacophony of unfounded opinion, self-serving agendas, and poor decision.

The growing moral acceptance of lies as sufficient "truth" because it FEELS true (my understanding of this utterly marvelous new word) is ethically even worse than simple lying, because it substitutes a gooshy sponge for the bedrock of modern ethics. Our newfound powers to ascertain real truth in this day of unlimited data and the scientific method become meaningless in a truthy world.

This is not a cold philosophy, because compassion can't be rendered effectively without truth to steer it. And facts, of course, have a liberal bias.

A win based on truthiness may deliver short-term gains, but will lock truthiness in as the proven best means to win. And nowadays, a cultural "lock-in" like this is nearly impossible to dislodge.

With this accomplished, NONE of our values, NONE of our most cherished objectives, can then be effectively achieved.

"If the truthiness relies upon the exclusion of some facts, does it become a lie?"

Yes. Indubitably, yes. Ethicists would be unanimous on this point.

Obama's stupid bipartisan, non-fighting bs was cover for a truly partisan liberal fighter, i'd have no problem with his truthiness.

is analogous to the "like-a-joke" that teevee

sitcom writers use to build fake-funny scenes.

p.s. why is my spell-checker so smart?

it says that "truthiness" is actually "frothiness".

Neither are important in the great scheme of things. The thing that's important is getting these bastards out of power. Period.