Thick sheets of ice made the crowd look like an anxious group of penguins. They stomped their feet attempting to revive feeling. Made tiny centimeter steps to not lose balance. Pushed up close trying to jam the line through the door. Reporters swarmed like bees around the line and extracted people to hear a glimpse of who the elusive “Iowa voter” was planning to support.
The week-long ordeal felt like a tight straddle between an anthropological study and carpetbagging. Of the five major Republican candidates we listened to, all emphasized in their own ways that the 2024 election was about one thing: an existential battle for Truth. However, the more I listened, the more uneasy I felt.
The Iowa Caucuses for the past 50 years have been the beginning to the nearly year-long ordeal of presidential elections. It’s small town retail politics at its best. Candidates pop into diners, Pizza Ranch (a chain pizza buffet restaurant), go to the state fair and a circus of events to prove how “normal” of a person they are.
This wasn’t an ordinary political event. The coldest caucus in history involved a blizzard and minus 40 degree temperatures in some parts of the state. On the second night, I drove into a snow drift and had to be rescued by an off duty ER nurse and a vigilante tow truck. It was so cold that my iced coffee froze instantly if it lapsed onto the lid.
We were bundled up for the last speech that the disgraced former President Donald Trump would be giving before the voting commenced. After we finally made it inside, there was free gear for us to take. I grabbed 15 drink koozies that had emblazoned on the front “Donald Trump Back to Back Iowa Caucus Champs – 2016 and 2020” — a physical manifestation of the empirical Truth relativism of Trump’s Republican Party. During the 2016 primary vote, Ted Cruz (28% of the vote) beat Donald Trump (24% of the vote).
Penguin steps soon became horse strides as the room opened up to a podium, rows of reserved seats, a rear stage filled with cameras and reporters and a pig pen of people trying to get as close to the former president as they could. Weaving between people, I attempted to move my way to the front trying to get the best view possible. Soon the flood of people practically slowly pinned people in their spots.
As people’s excitement grew, the energy in the room began to climb. The first five minutes of the event were devoted to an ad titled ”GOD MADE TRUMP” which told the story of Trump as “a shepherd to mankind” — an ad which received thunderous applause, shouts and fists raised in the air to show respect.
Trump was preceded by a litany of congressmen, local officials and right wing pundits all echoing an unqualified endorsement of the former president. When the man finally stepped on stage, followed by at least seven secret service agents, the roar of the crowd did not end for minutes. Much brighter orange in real life, the man who dominated the beginning of my political consciousness, began to speak.
The nearly two-hour speech was funnier than I wanted it to be. I laughed more than I wanted to. It felt somewhat similar to a religious experience. People raised their hands swaying with the rhythm of his voice, except for cheers there was an ominous quiet that proliferated the hall and the meaning people around me got from his speech was similar to my own experiences with Mass. It provided healing, hope and an answer to the ills of their life.
Many have written since 2015 the ways Donald Trump has rendered a type of ”post-truth politics.” What increasingly became clear was that not only did he exist in a post-truth politics but the words he spoke — even those rigorously tested and not defendable — became an incarnate truth to the people around us.
The man with the big beard and tank top American flag shirt made a fist pump every time Trump made a claim about the 2020 election being stolen (a fact that has been tried in nearly every court in the land without a single example of voter fraud). The women behind me with the thick round American flag earrings hollered with each mention of demonic immigrants or when he read his allegorical poem about the vicious snake. No matter what he said it became Truth. Instead of God revealing Truth to the masses, Trump was the bearer of news.
These events were fertile ground for those attempting to contest the “Truths” laid out by candidates. Protests broke out during Trump’s rally and many other events. Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy all had their events interrupted by climate protesters from the Sunrise Movement, an international NGO focused on raising awareness about the climate crisis. DeSantis had the protesters tackled and removed; Trump had them taken away by the police telling them to “Go home to mommy;” Ramaswamy attempted to have a discussion with them.
Ramaswamy — who has since dropped out of the race — ran on a platform of ten Truths. Every event had a banner with the word TRUTH behind as he spoke and staffers gave out pamphlets that had the ten Truths. Those “Truths” included were “GOD is REAL”; “THERE are TWO GENDERS”; “HUMAN FLOURISHING requires FOSSIL FUELS”; and a whole litany of rallying cries against the modern world.
Ramaswamy’s event was hosted by the Indo-American Political Action Committee inside a hotel conference room with nearly 200 people packed inside. Chai and samosas were served and people had come all the way from Puerto Rico to hear him speak. Over the course of the previous year, Ramaswamy held events in all 99 counties in Iowa twice (termed a “double Grassley” after the senator who visits each county every year). He held as many events as every other candidate combined. So this was just an event par for the course.
Charismatic and calm Ramaswamy commanded the room with ease. His clean brown leather jacket and pristine black pants created the look of a hip young professor rather than a presidential candidate. The creases near his eyes showed the amount of time he had invested in smiling throughout his life while his quick wit showed the amount of time he spent in education.
In the middle of his discussion on climate change, a young man stood up, raised his hand and wanted to ask a question. More members of the audience slowly stood as he told them there would be time for questions at the end.
By the time he got around to questions, all sides were ready for a fight. Climate activists attempted to drill home that he had earned over $50 million dollars from fossil fuel companies while he countered with a purposefully erroneous statement that more people have died from renewables than climate change. One protester became beat red as he yelled at the top of his lungs. Ramaswamy yelled at the protesters for their stances on the ways he acquired his wealth while protestors screeched that he was a liar. One Indian dad repeatedly kept yelling at the protestors “Are you a first grader?” while ten new protests held yellow signs and charged that he was a climate criminal.
As the event devolved, Ramaswamy eventually kicked the protesters out — to which they responded by banging on the windows and yelling. When they finally quieted down, Ramaswamy, in his full millennial swagger, repeatedly hit on how the climate change activists were part of a quasi-religious movement not based in Truth.
DeSantis attempted to trace a history of Foucault and a political left that had policed language to the point that Truth had become eradicated. Hutchinson couldn’t answer basic questions about his record of blocking civil rights legislation even while emphasizing his concern for those very rights. Nikki Haley, who recently was in hot water for the inability to name slavery as the cause of the Civil War, took a more discursive approach telling “hard Truths” about how the “radical Joe Biden” has lampooned Truth.
There is an asymmetrical, yet still profoundly hypocritical relationship, between the current two parties and Truth. It doesn’t take but a cursory look through the columns of the National Review or the Irish Rover to see that those on the political right have this same cynical view of how the other side views Truth. Their critiques were ones that I can (in many ways) agree with as some of the pundits depict a left so focused on language around race, gender and environmentalism that it loses sight of the underlying economic conditions that are perpetuating injustices. Ramaswamy, in discussing climate change, brought up that the extraction of lithium and other metals to create batteries for electric cars and how that so often relies on unsafe slave labor in the Global South — something the left often ignores in its push for a green future.
Many responded to my trip to Iowa with gaffes and astonishment —“Have you become a Republican?” or “How could you even stand in the same room as Trump?” — as they proliferated the belief on the left that to listen to the other side is a waste of time.
In the post-1970s world, the left felt political changes had become impossible to solve and moved to a surface level battle over language. The left embraced postmodernism as a wall of protecting socialist beliefs from the political material success of the right. In Norman Gera’s essay “Language, Truth and Justice,” she writes that “if there is no truth, there is no injustice.” The left isolated as the right triumphed. No need to waste time with those who disagree with you, no need to understand where others’ Truth claims are coming from.
Yes, we need people like the Sunrise protesters. They are a powerful resistance to the right’s denial of empirical Truths. Truths that can be found in science and observation of the natural world. They are part of any democratic culture and are seeking urgent solutions in a system meant to move slowly. However, protests like theirs showed what Ramaswamy called the quasi-religious movement of the left against Truth.
The conversation — or yelling match — became a puck on an air hockey table. Neither was able to understand the world view of the other because there were no uniting Truths between them. In accepting relativism, that there is no Truth, the left has created the very political conditions for which the right has used to reject empirical Truths all together.
The raucous caucus for Truth didn’t begin or end in Iowa. The question for us all is what can it look like to understand the Truth claims and frameworks of others? On the left, how can we use that understanding when the other side has rejected Truth altogether to form more unifying Truths? On the right, what could more unifying, yet pluralistic, Truths look like in the increasingly polarized world?
Liberalism rests on Truth. Democracy rests on Truth. Both parties insist on a relativist understanding of Truth. Are these projects worth saving or is it time to go back to an era of authoritarian kings?
Dane Sherman is a junior at Notre Dame studying American Studies, peace studies, philosophy, and gender studies. Dane enjoys good company, good books, good food and talking about faith in public life. Outside of The Observer, Dane can be found exploring Erasmus books with friends, researching philosophy, with folks from Prism, reading NYTs op-eds from David Brooks/Ezra Klein/Michelle Goldberg or at the Purple Porch getting some food. Dane ALWAYS wants to chat and can be reached at @danesherm on twitter or lsherma2@nd.edu.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
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