Thursday, November 17, 2016

Paradigm shift: Truth is Dead as Post-Truth defines the Trump Era


It's official: Truth is dead. Facts are passe.

And this sentiment — 😂 — is so last year.

Oxford Dictionaries has selected “post-truth” as 2016's international word of the year, after the contentious “Brexit” referendum and an equally divisive U.S. presidential election caused usage of the adjective to skyrocket, according to the Oxford University Press.

The dictionary defines “post-truth” as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

In this case, the “post-” prefix doesn't mean “after” so much as it implies an atmosphere in which a notion is irrelevant — but then again, who says you have to take our word for it anymore?

Throughout a grueling presidential campaign in which accusations of lies and alternate realities flowed freely, in every direction, hundreds of fact checks were published about statements from both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Dozens of media outlets found that Trump's relationship with the truth was, well, complicated.

“We concede all politicians lie,” conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote in September. “Nevertheless, Donald Trump is in a class by himself.”

She cited The Atlantic's David Frum, who described Trump's dishonesty in May as “qualitatively different than anything before seen from a major-party nominee.”

None of this seemed to matter significantly to those who supported him.

“There is no doubt that even in the quadrennial truth-stretching that happens in presidential campaigns, Trump has set records for fabrication,” Chris Cillizza wrote days before the election.

And yet, Cillizza noted, Trump was seen as more honest than Clinton by an eight-point margin, according to a Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll released on Nov. 2.[...]

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