by Steve Gimbel and Gwydion Suilebhan
Jokes about JD Vance’s romantic entanglements with living room furniture have been ubiquitous for about two weeks now. Professional comedians like Chelsea Handler and John Oliver have leaned into them. Friends on social media have traded quips about Vance’s “one nightstand” and his illegitimate “love seat.” Kamala Harris’ own PR team even joined in on the fun.
The parade of puns all stemmed from one satirical tweet that was never meant to be taken seriously or believed literally. The fact that Democrats nonetheless embraced the idea, couching their attacks on Vance in sofa jokes, signals a fascinating shift in psychology that merits a closer look.
When we say that something is true, we generally mean one of two different things. The first is that whatever claim we are making is factually accurate. “Kamala Harris attended Howard University” is true because she did, in fact, graduate from that institution.
The second is a bit more slippery. Think of the way in which a great work of fiction like Heart of Darkness or The Color Purple can express profound truths about the human condition. Novels aren’t factual, but what they reveal can still be true in a deep way. That’s what we call narrative truth, rather than factual truth.
19th-century philosopher William Whewell wrote that facts are like pearls, valuable in their own right, but that in order to make a necklace out of them, we need a string: a coherent story that connects all the facts together in order to give us a deeper understanding. The narrative that allows us to make sense of the world is as important as the facts it connects.
Democrats have long been obsessed with factuality, with the pearls. “Find the Falsehood” is practically an Olympic sport on the left. Steve Bannon knew this, and he encouraged Donald Trump to “flood the zone” by telling as many whoppers as he could, turning Democrats’ fact-checking obsession into something akin to the last level of Space Invaders, when there were so many alien ships you could barely shoot them all down.
The GOP, on the other hand, has built its entire platform out of “alternative facts” that are thoroughly derided by “the reality-based community.” In the last few days, Trump has tried to disallow live fact-checking during his interview at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention, and he’s refusing to allow fact-checking during any future debate he might have with Kamala Harris. Republicans love narrative truth, accessorizing their campaign outfits with one faux pearl necklace after another. Read more »