Plato famously tells us of prisoners chained in a cave, unable to move their bodies, looking at a blank wall. Behind them are puppeteers holding up puppets and a fire.
Βy Robert F. Kennedy Jr
The prisoners can’t see the puppeteers, or the puppets, or the fire. What the prisoners see are conjured shadows on the wall.
And the prisoners mistake those shadows for life, for reality, for truth.
This old story speaks to us now.
It describes the way the media projects a distorted shadow of reality onto our televisions and computer screens. It describes the way politicians from the two parties distort fellow Americans into black-and-white abstractions and hate-objects.
America, we need to escape this captivity. We need to leave the cave. We can no longer mistake shadows for the truth.
Outside the cave there are sobering problems, yes, but there are also rivers and trees and sunlight. And fellow human beings. And a beautiful nation.
Plato famously tells us of prisoners chained in a cave, unable to move their bodies, looking at a blank wall. Behind them are puppeteers holding up puppets and a fire. The prisoners can’t see the puppeteers, or the puppets, or the fire. What the prisoners see are conjured shadows…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 7, 2024
