Democracy, Truth, and Animal Farm

I just finished reading Orwell's Animal Farm, and my biggest takeaway was how important truth is to a democracy. The general idea of a democracy is that the population gets to vote on what approaches they'd like to apply to their problems and whom they trust to deliver solutions. We can only make intelligent decisions about what and whom to vote for if we have a basic agreement about what's going on in the world. We don't even have to agree on what our problems are, but we do have to work towards some shared understanding of what life is like, why it's like that, and how the world really works.

We need to have leaders who have allegiance to the truth and allegiance to reality. We need to ask ourselves: "Does this person understand how the world really works -- how well does s/he understand reality?" And, "Does this person believe s/he should be truthful?"

If we are committed to understanding the truth, then we can work towards understanding how the world really works. If someone does not have a commitment to truth, then that person isn't trying to be grounded in reality, and eventually those who ignore truth start acting as though something is true just because s/he asserted it.

A politician who has no allegiance to truth is someone who should not be our leader because disrespecting truth is undermining democracy. I suppose everyone is used to politicians spinning everything, but even in spin there are degrees of selfishness versus openness to truth, because everybody struggles with whether to pursue their own selfish interests in place of pursuing truth. We need to be aware of who among our leaders cares so much about being popular that s/he cares less about truth.