The Post-Truth Era

The Oxford Dictionary new word of the year for 2016 is post-truth. It's ironic that in this age of the Internet when we have access to most of the world's knowledge, facts have become old fashioned. I guess we should have seen this coming when Stephen Colbert coined the word truthiness a decade ago. Colbert was using the new word in response to the Bush 43 administration's trouble with the truth. It was also a play on George W's problems with the English language and his propensity to make up words when the Queen's English escaped him. 

My recollection of most truthiness is that it had some anchor or starting point in actual fact. Well, that apparently was too limiting for many. We have evolved from the ½ truth and ¼ truth to the no-truth. Conspiracy theories are now planks in political platforms. 

Science, we don't need no stinking science. As long as big energy can make money by mining and pumping carbon fuels and afford lobbyists and campaign funding then climate change must be a myth. What do those climate scientists know, they aren't making millions for Wall Street and their stockholders. If you are not at least a millionaire then you are pretty useless and probably stupid.

Our president-elect never lets a fact get in the way of what he believes. He doesn't believe that the Russians interfered with the last campaign and election, so he gives no stock to the evidence collected by our intelligence agencies. He would have won the popular vote except for the millions of illegal votes. No evidence of that. 

Trump doesn't need daily security briefings because he's a smart guy. Besides, the facts in those briefings may contradict his beliefs. 

The new National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, never met a conspiracy theory he didn't embrace. Flynn's son apparently inherited these conspiracy theory tendencies. He believed a DC pizza joint, without a basement, was fronting for a Democratic child sex/porn ring. That ring included Hillary Clinton and John Podesta and was run out of that nonexistent basement. 

PolitiFacts and FactCheck both estimated that 70% of what came out of Trump's mouth during the campaign was mostly or completely false. Is 30% true good enough?

Yes, established newspapers and TV news organizations do make mistakes and occasionally report false news. The difference is that they correct their mistakes and also do not manufacture that news. That manufacturing of false news is now a growth industry on the internet. 

Be careful, be attentive, be skeptical, be curious. Let's make this age of post-truth a very short age in our history.

-30-