Let’s Be Honest, Post-Truth Began Long Before Donald Trump
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The Guardian recently ran an op-ed with a headline which stated, “Truth is evaporating before our eyes.” Really? The subhed read, “The US election showed that honesty is not as important as we might have wished. If all politicians lie, all that matters is what they lie about.” Oh, really? Because I would argue truth evaporated long ago and honesty is important, end of story.
Before I begin, I have to credit Adam Curtis for making the documentary, Hypernormalisation. It’s legit one of the most eye-opening documentaries I’ve watched in a long time and I IMPLORE everyone to watch it. If you love docs and hate the state of the world, you’ll love it! Mind you, it’s three hours long but utterly enthralling. The Wikipedia summary reads:
“HyperNormalisation is a 2016 BBC documentary by British filmmaker Adam Curtis. The film was released on 16 October 2016 on the BBC iPlayer. In the film, Curtis argues that since the 1970s, governments, financiers, and technological utopians have given up on the complex “real world” and built a simple “fake world” that is run by corporations and kept stable by politicians.”
Watch. This. Film. I thought I was watching some sort of sci-fi thriller or conspiracy theory movie. Except, I knew most of the players and moments because many of them occurred during my lifetime. The film touches on Trump and all but predicts he will win the presidency. After watching it, frankly, it’s hard to imagine any other outcome, which is soul-crushing. I urge, urge, urge you to watch it. I plan on writing more about it in the coming days.
Post-truth is a recurring theme in Hypernormalisation and it’s very clear that post-truth didn’t begin with Donald Trump. Post-truth is just a new way to describe lying. A headline which reads, “President Trump repeatedly lies to supporters” doesn’t have the same effect because it’s not nearly ominous or confusing enough. What is “post-truth”? Post-truth just distorts the fact that it’s still a lie. The media reaction and fascination with post-truth is not new either, it’s actually pretty predictable when you look back at the last 30 or 40 years.
George W. Bush and Tony Blair each lied when they claimed Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction™ to send us into the Iraq war in 2003. Technically, Blair “misrepresented” intelligence to secure approval for the Iraq War but then again, what’s the difference? What happened next? Everyone, including the media went along because that was our new reality. We were at war, not because Iraq or Saddam Hussein had WMDs, but because facing an increase in global terrorism with little to show in the way of improvements post-9/11, we had to get SOMEBODY. Hussein was the perfect villain. The media covered the war and we consumed it. Simplifcation complete. Nevermind that this is the same war which created ISIS. Too real, too complex. On the world turned.
Post-Truth was around long before then too. In 1988, after the Lockerbie Bombing, it was easier to blame Libya instead of Syria, specifically Gaddafi (who was, to be certain, not a good guy) who loved and welcomed the global spotlight. He went along with it — because now he got to be the center of attention. The media also played along because once again, the idea of an evil villain was easier to consume than the complex reality which required nuance. Gaddafi’s history with the US and UK is complex at best but perhaps best described with select lyrics from a Katy Perry song: hot, cold, yes, no, in, out, up and down. Too real, too complex. On the world turned.
Remember the financial meltdown in 2008 when we thought we’d all go broke? Banks deemed too big to fail had cheated and robbed people blind. Then WE PAID THEM for it. We bailed them out. Bankers walked away with fat checks and bonuses because, HEY, just because those assholes couldn’t pay back bad mortgages we knowingly sold them, and then, just because we packaged those shit loans and sold them to pensioners, doesn’t mean we don’t get our taste, mm‘kay? Bet that won’t happen again, right? ON THE WORLD TURNS.
The Matrix best illustrates what i’m struggling to convey. It feels like reality today is whatever we choose to believe it is — we choose to see the world how Neo and company see things when they’re “plugged in.” In reality, the world today better resembles The Matrix when they’re all running around in shit clothes avoiding massive monsters but we just choose to see dope leather outfits and sunglasses though.
Post-Truth is all around us. It is our present, we exist in it. Humans are shown to have an attention span no longer than 8 seconds (goldfish have 9, apparently) and we can’t disconnect. We can’t sit still for longer than five minutes to critcally assess what the hell is even happening. Everyone is spoon-fed a version of reality they’d like to believe in. Republicans, here’s your Fox News stew; Democrats, here’s your organic-fed MSNBC, now eat up! The 24 hour news cycle has honestly ruined journalism and changed the way we see the world. That’s not to say there still isn’t good journlism out there, because there is (SO to Kurt Eichenwald!). But like food consumption today, why make the effort and bother to shell out for a steak from Lugers when this McDonald’s is right here?
We can’t keep up with the lies or the development of post-truth because everything is constantly changing. There’s always a new problem, a new issue we’re not quite focused on but somehow peripherally aware of (case in point: Aleppo). Remember when Gary Johnson, a guy running for president didn’t know what Aleppo was? Damn. Really makes you think, huh? So who benefits in this scenario? It certainly isn’t society.
They’re bringing crime, they’re bringing drugs. Syrian refugees could be the greatest trojan horse in history! All actual comments Donald Trump made with zero supporting facts during his campaign that the media happily played DAY IN AND DAY OUT. DAY IN AND DAY OUT. There used to be a time when the news only reported the facts. When you didn’t care what was happening with Kim Kardashian and/or Kanye West because they were not newsworthy. They were celebrities — a form of entertainment to be consumed separately. But then something happened along the way and entertainment has somehow become news. Or has news somehow become entertainment? Hard to know where the lines blur.
But I digress, Trump goes on TV and makes all sorts of incorrect statements, the media covers it, Fox News and co. stream it. Someone somewhere eats their version of news soup. “It’s on TV, it must be fact. He’s saying it, it must be true. Why else would it be on TV??” Good point! Ratings — but that’s a WHOLE ‘nother ballgame. My point is, facts have been subjective and selective for some time now. Post-truth isn’t new, it could be described as selective journalism, a media tactic for soliciting clicks, views, ratings and attention.
If you watch TV today you know one thing: there is no positive news. The world is a garbage fire and that’s what the continuous coverage reinforces. Who will fix that? Who will make the world less of a garbage fire? Maybe the guy who claims, “I alone can fix it?” Well, that’s sure as hell what it sounds like (TO A LOT OF PEOPLE). Wait, #BreakingNews, here: no one person or country or any one person can fix it. Trump isn’t going to eliminate ISIS because spoiler alert: ISIS is everywhere. As more and more westerners, fall out of love with their respective countries and become endoctrinated (you’ve seen #Homeland), the threat only moves closer to home. Hell, the threat is already AT home. San Bernadino. Pulse. Ohio State. These people are not refugees, they’re Americans. Post-truth ensures we mostly skirt this important fact and focus on the one thing everyone can comprehend is really bad: “terrorist attack.” Too real, too complex. On the world turns.
Facebook is an echo chamber but we’re fooling ourselves if with think partisan news channels are any different.
Talkshows and argument fill the airtime more cheaply than on the ground newsgathering. To create impact and get noticed both hosts and argument become more partisan and more extreme. People choose the channel that agrees with their views and become less exposed to other viewpoints — encouraging partisanship, political polarisation and a political echochamber that ill serves open democratic debate.
MSNBC soup for me, Fox News soup for you. Is Sean Hannity a journalist? Show me how Hannity is a journalist. According to Fox News, Hannity is a POPULAR television personality (so not a journalist then?), who during the 2016 presidential election, openly debated Hillary Clinton’s mental health on live television. Did she have Parkinson’s or was it a stroke? This was viewed by millions of people, then written about, then shared widely on social media then boom! You’re at the grocery store and your cashier is telling you they are CERTAIN Hillary Clinton will be dead before November 8th because they read it someplace. They can’t recall exactly where because there’s so much to consume and so many places to get it.
Shit! Scary stuff right? Post-truth is alive and well and has been for some time now, so much so that in some ways it’s already won. I watch Fox News so I’m informed. Fox News tells me Trump is infallable (Fox News knows this isn’t true, but they air it anyway) therefore Trump is infallable.
And I don’t want to isolate the issue to Republicans either. It’s very true of Democrats as well, I myself am guilty! Bernie vs. Hillary: the battle that never was but that you believed in because you read enough tweets, headlines and posts in your democratic sub-echo chamber. Email scandal: bad. Email contents: meh. EMAIL. EMAIL. EMAIL. Let’s all just keep saying EMAIL! If Bernie didn’t say he was sick and tired of her damn EMAILS he would have won! Class politics: good! Identity politics: bad. We can’t leave the middle class behind. Well fuck trans/women’s/minority rights then! Not the establishment. NO MORE ESTABLISHMENT. WE’RE TIRED OF THE ESTABLISHMENT. (PS: IT’S ALL THE ESTABLISHMENT!).
Jeff Weaver is to Bernie Sanders what Kellyanne Conway is to Donald Trump what Robby Mook is to Hillary Clinton. We are no different. Taking back our country! Our Revolution! We’re the Revolution! The Revolution is exclusive. We’re changing the world! But first we email, tweet, text! I hate to break it to everyone but the revolution will not be televised because the revolution already happened. Corporations won.
The sooner folks get hip to the fact that it’s going to take everyone — and I do mean everyone, to right this ship, the better off we’ll all be. But that will require a great deal of discomfort AND effort. This is BIGGER than who gets to run the DNC. This is BIGGER than “Bernie would have won” This is way BIGGER than let’s just get through the next four years.
Until people decide they want to live in the real world and face all these ugly truths, we’ll just continue to exist in a state of post-truth whether we like it or not.
