Alternative facts on TV
The term “alternative facts” was coined by Kellyanne Conway, a senior White House aide in Donald Trump’s administration, when she tried to justify a lie by then press secretary Sean Spicer, who claimed that the crowd assembled in Washington, DC for Trump’s inauguration in 2017 “was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration” in person in the world (January 22, 2017). So what if aerial photos showed that the crowd at Trump’s inauguration ceremony was smaller than it had been in 2009, when Barack Obama was sworn in? Conway insisted that there are many ways to see reality.
In Europe, the term did not make much of an impression. We have had long exposure to “alternate realities.” In Greece, we did not even lift an eyebrow. We knew first-hand the “alternative events” of pre-election rallies, when parties claimed that Athens’ “Syntagma Square was packed with crowds and Omonia Square was shaking.” All the campaign gatherings of all parties have always been described as the largest since the establishment of the Greek state.
The traffic control panel at the Larissa train station, near where the train accident happened three weeks ago, gave birth to Schrodinger’s ‘kittens’
But the problem is that we have become so addicted to “alternative facts” that nothing surprises us. A recent example was the discovery of automatic operation and signaling by Minister of Transport Giorgos Gerapetritis. While we were fighting and debating about why Greek railways don’t have this system yet and who is to blame for the delays in the completion of the 717 contract that would introduce automatic operation and signaling in the railway network, the debate moved to an alternative level. It became something like the famous thought experiment of quantum mechanics, Schrodinger’s cat.
The impressive thing is not that Gerapetritis claimed that automatic operation and signaling existed in Greece; it is that the traffic control panel at the Larissa train station, near where the train accident happened three weeks ago, gave birth to Schrodinger’s “kittens.” While some stationmasters were saying that this panel can oversee the railway tracks for 2 kilometers in either direction and others were talking about 5 kilometers, suddenly we heard from the minister that it can oversee about 8 kilometers in either direction. It seems we can’t even be sure of the range of this system, so I suggest a compromise that would take into account the phenomenon of dilation: In the summer, when it is very hot in Larissa, the system dilates to see 8 kilometers ahead and before the station, and in the winter it contracts to 4.
I will not comment on the “alternative facts” that main opposition SYRIZA constantly produces, most recently with its protest against “water privatization,” even though the new law expressly mentions that the public nature of water providers is protected. I will just say that Trump’s legacy not only afflicts the United States.
