Imagination Is More Important Than Knowledge

By Martin H. Levinson

Donald Trump says Ukraine started the war currently going on with Russia. In saying this he’s flipped conventional dogma, which, relying on the facts, says Russia invaded Ukraine. That so many people trust their senses and reason to make conclusions is a tribute to the crazy idea that facts are important and need to be honored. I can’t think of a more tiresome and stultifying philosophy.

It doesn’t take a great mind to report on what everyone can see. Pretty much anyone can do it. What I don’t think most people can do is what President Trump does multiple times daily, creatively conjure up events and situations that the rest of us could never imagine. Saying that Ukraine is the aggressor in the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict is a prime example of that.

Why are so many people enthralled by facts, refusing to accept explanations that go against rock-hard, indisputable evidence? I believe it is because they are limited in what they can envision and worried that if they contradict what seems patently obvious to everyone they will be labeled liars or idiots. Fortunately, this kind of narrow-minded thinking does not trouble DJT who knows veracity is a highly overrated virtue meant for those without the courage of their convictions.

Asking whether Trump is telling the truth about the fight between Ukraine and Russia, or anything else, is a fool’s errand that only a fool would undertake. Truth, as countless authoritarians over the course of history have made abundantly clear, is the refuge of the weak and feckless—gutless individuals who think there is something wrong with telling tales. Any raconteur worth his salt can tell you there is nothing wrong with telling tales unless they are told unconvincingly, which might be the case if you are an advocate of preserving trust in relationships or a believer in the scientific method. Luckily for the American people, #47 could care less about trust in relationships and the value of the scientific method in determining reality.

So let’s not get all bent out of shape in trying to hold our Dear Leader to the facts and intensely monitor what he says about things. Whether it’s his comments that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is an unelected dictator who started a war with Russia, that the US has given far more monetary aid to Ukraine than Europe, or that Zelenskyy has a 4% approval rating, it’s not the facts that matter, it’s the delivery and imaginative effort undergirding Trump’s statements that count. Albert Einstein famously said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge” because he believed imagination allows for the envisioning of new possibilities and breakthroughs beyond the limits of currently observable knowledge. President Trump, a worldclass, stable genius with an IQ far greater than that of Einstein, has lived his entire life based on this idea and, as any fair-minded fabulist would tell you, it’s a notion to be cherished.