The Post Truth Era
James Comey was fired for his handling of the Hillary Clinton emails; or he was fired for failing to end the Russia investigation; or for not publicly stating the President was not a target; or failing to pledge loyalty to the President. Donald Trump didn’t know Stormy Daniels; didn’t pay Stormy Daniels; didn’t know Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels; paid Cohen back for paying Stormy Daniels. The United States is going to build a wall on the Mexican border, we are building a wall on the Mexican border, we are repairing existing walls on the Mexican border.
We have entered a new era, when the “truth” ain’t true. This isn’t only a Donald Trump phenomenon, this is a widespread occurrence, almost normal in daily life. There is little that is universally accepted as true; every political, religious, and cultural faction has their own version of the truth.
We stop listening to those things we don’t believe are true. We tune (or are tuned by our media) to see and hear our OWN TRUTH. When an “opposing” truth slips in, we immediately see it as an outlier, not real, or in the President’s term, FAKE NEWS. Our media sources will do this for you, selecting stories that you agree with and weeding out those that you don’t. It’s in the “algorithm.”
As someone with a political cross-section of friends, I still get to see some of the “other sides” truths. One of my “annoying traits” (I suspect) is that when I see a clearly outlandish claim, I go to work to check it against fact (even if it’s not their truth.) I never get thanks for that, more often, my sources of “truth” are attacked. For example, George Washington NEVER SAID the following about the Second Amendment:
A free people ought not only be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.
It’s out there on the internet, you can see it with a nice portrait of the first President on Facebook. But he never said it. Several fact checking groups including Snopes agree, as well as the Mt. Vernon Historical Society. But beware of questioning someone else’s truth.
Speaking of George Washington, he didn’t say, “I cannot tell a lie,” either. A later biographer, Parson Weems, made that up along with the cherry tree. But it doesn’t seem quite so long ago that there was a price to pay for telling a lie. Bill Clinton said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” He said that to the public, and then again under deposition. He later said he believed oral sex wasn’t sexual relations, but the House of Representatives voted to impeach him for perjury, and he stood trial in the Senate (where he was NOT removed from office.)
Full disclosure: THEN and now, I believe Clinton should not have been impeached. I did and do believe he should have resigned for disgracing the office of the President, by taking advantage of an intern. If he had, Al Gore might have been President instead of George W Bush and the world would be a very different place.
Agree or not with the actions taken, “back then” even the ultimate politician, Bill Clinton was held to some standard.
Today, it’s not so much. Today there is a media network devoted to one truth, Fox News, and there are other networks closer to what may be REAL truth, including my addiction, MSNBC. But there is no common denominator, no common set of facts that can serve as a bridge from one view to another. We are in a “post-truth era.”
So what happens in our new era? When I was in high school, I read George Orwell’s “1984.” In that book, the enemies of yesterday (Russia?) become the friends of tomorrow, and the Ministries of Truth, Love, Peace and Plenty told lies, hate, fought wars, and rationed goods. Today we have an Environmental Protection Agency that has stopped protecting, a Justice Department that is struggling to be just, a Homeland Security Department that rounds up people, and a State Department that gave up diplomacy. Words no longer have the same meaning.
Our view of politicians is so low that we no longer hold them to any standards. If it was known that President Kennedy was having affairs in the White House, or that Woodrow Wilson’s stroke was so severe, would they have remained in office? In 1988, Colorado Senator Gary Hart was running for President. He challenged rumors that he was having an affair, almost saying “…catch me if you can.” The press did, and Hart was done. Today, he could have simply called them all liars, purveyors of Fake News, or paid Donna Rice off with a “do not disclose agreement.”
In a recent Ohio political campaign, a candidate wanted to make a point about his opponent. In a commercial, he took a picture of the opponent shaking hands with President Trump and “Photoshopped” it so that the opponent was shaking hands with Hillary Clinton. When he was called out for it, it was simply “creative campaigning,” another version of Fake News. There was no apology, no retraction, no withdrawal from the campaign.
We get what we accept. While there are a lot of reasons that “good” people avoid politics (raising money for campaigns is one huge factor) another is that they are afraid to sully themselves in the field. We get what we deserve if we don’t hold politicians, and certainly, the current President, to a higher standard. The standard set by Speaker Ryan, “…don’t listen to what he says, watch what he does,” is unacceptable if we want something different and better than what we are getting now.
The real danger is the one prophesied in 1949 by Orwell in “1984.” When we no longer value truth, when we no longer share a common knowledge of fact, then our government can do what it wants, whether it’s in our interest or not. We will lose our democracy if we don’t find a common truth. Big Brother will do more than watch.
