From 400 BC to 2000 AD, from ancient Greece to contemporary America, fake news has remained a potent agency for mass indoctrination.

However, some choose to shatter the comfort of reductionistic thought to face mockery and chastisement for the sake of honesty and reality. In time, some of these rebels become heroes. Socrates is recorded as a martyr of such significance.

Throughout Donald J. Trump's ascention to the presidency, there has been much discussion about overly vague and simplistic speech. Perhaps, for some, the comparison of the populist candidate to one of history's most significant philosophers falls into that very category.

While many dissimilarities exist, these two unorthodox men are surprisingly connected by their disapproval of the amusement epidemics in early Greece and modern-day America. (In this context, the word "amusement" should be understood literally: "without thought").

Socrates decried the thoughtlessness of Athens' elite in "The Trial of Socrates." During his trial, Plato recounts: "...and then if somebody asked [the accusers], Why, what evil does [Socrates] practise or teach? they do not know, and they can not tell; but in order that they may not appear to be at a loss, they repeat the ready-made charges which are used against all philosophers...for they do not like to confess that their presence of knowledge has been detected."

Instead of defending himself empirically, he reprimands his three primary accusers at his trial (where he knows his judges will remain unpersuaded). Socrates takes the time to point out how his opponents become emotionally inflamed by his "plainness of speech" and how this outrage confirms the truth of his arguments. To justify their irritation with this non-conformist, Socrates' opposition pulled out commonly accepted accusations such as corrupting the youth or not submitting to the gods.

Unfounded accusations? Plain yet inflammatory speech? Outrage amongst the establishment?

The trial is reminiscent of the 2016 presidential election in which Trump famously grilled the established media corporations for their alleged lies. His accusations were sometimes as simple as "wrong."

Socrates' tenacity to reveal widely accepted and mindless discourse of Athenian society's leading figures parallels Trump's desire to tackle media corporations such as CNN and Buzzfeed in the name of preventing "fake news."

Albeit for different reasons, Socrates and Donald Trump both challenged and are currently challenging issues that had been either accepted or ignored. Trump may not be as morally opposed to irrational and unfounded thought as Fyodor Dostoevsky's well-penned stance of "if not reason, then the devil," but he is undeniably committed to raising the standard for widely-circulated claims.

Socrates saw the determination of "true and false knowledge" as blessing, as he concludes in his monologue "Above all I shall be able to continue my search into true in false knowledge...What would not a man give, O judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or Odysseys or Sisyphus..."

The credibility of Donald Trump has been on trial while the American public judges from their couches in front of the TV, from their laptops, from their smartphones. Hilary Clinton attempted to sway the jury with her fact-checking brigade and influential authors wrote insightful pieces urging wariness of Donald Trump, yet plain speech which called out the media spoke loudest to millions of Americans.

To Socrates, transparency in the pursuit of truth is key, so fact checking would likely be respected. But in the classic The Republic, Socrates rebukes his students for taking discussions on meaningless rabbit trails. He whisks away pages of intelligent discourse on the consequences and complexities of justice in search of the mere definition. Today, politically-motivated fact checking or emotionally-driven trigger warnings and safe spaces impede the pure pursuit of truth.

When sites such as Facebook serve as a primary source of news for thousands, when subscriptions to in-depth news sites are unaccessible to thousands, it is unsurprising that 500 word articles and 140 character tweets should deliver the news in dramatically reduced bits.

Yet Socrates speaks of a society in which simplicity is not a substitute for content but rather a mechanism of accurate delivery and a society where speaking truth is not criminally offensive to make Athens great again.

Likewise, let's hope that Donald Trump can meaningfully pursue truth, transparency, and honest simplicity in his administration and encourage the same qualities in the mainstream media to make America great again.