Charlotte -
On the post-truth thing, I think it's possible to discern a couple of
different layers. First of all, of course, there's the fact that Trump
himself has foregrounded the term 'fake news', accusing his opponents of
trying to discredit him by spreading lies and rumours about him, while
doing the exact same thing himself, making pronouncements which are
either based on no evidence or very little evidence, without any
reference to where he's getting his information from.
Secondly, there's the style in which he makes his pronouncements - for a
start the way he talks is much more like some opinionated bloke in a bar
than the average politician. He hedges his bets far less, he seems much
less self-conscious, he's more colloquial, and he backs up what he's
saying with lots of repetitive and essentially meaningless phrases such
as 'Oh yeah, you'd better believe it, it really is' - all of which gives
you the impression that he's just blurting out what he thinks without
there being much intellectual process involved. This is precisely what
makes him an attractive figure to a lot of people: he comes across in
some ways as an 'ordinary guy', although of course he's really anything
but.
And then there's the fact that a lot of his pronouncements are made
online, via Twitter. Twitter isn't the right place for people to publish
considered opinions or engage in intellectual debate. It's a place for
claim and counter-claim, for opinions without substantiation. So, in the
era of Trump, political debate seems to have come down from the
broadsheets and the newsrooms into the bars, the streets and social
media. It's not about investigative journalism any more, or facts and
figures, or historical perspective, or political or economic or social
theories - it's all gut feeling and prejudice. You can't refute what
Trump and his supporters have to say by pointing out that it hasn't got
any foundation in fact or any intellectual coherence, because they're
not interested in that stuff. They're only interested in who shouts the
loudest, or who can make the showiest claims.
Of course this is really nothing new. Just look at Hitler.
But there's also another layer to the post-truth thing, which is about
the difficulty we (the left-wing or left-leaning intellectuals or
sort-of intellectuals of the UK and the USA) have in accepting that the
other side (right-wing or right-leaning prejudice-mongers) won the
Brexit vote and the last presidential election. Surely people can't
actually believe that stuff? They can't actually hold those views and
want those things, can they? It's been some kind of con trick; the wool
has been pulled over people's eyes; they were taken in by a lot of false
claims about the money that would be made available for the NHS if we
came out of Europe, or about the new jobs that would be created or the
existing jobs that would be safeguarded if the tide of immigration could
be stemmed; and they've also been corrupted by their i-phones, their
x-boxes, their social media and their online porn, the whole digital and
virtual world, which has prevented them from paying proper attention to
the realities of the political and social situation, stopped them from
giving a shit about things like health care and care of the elderly,
stopped them from being responsible citizens or having a sense of
community or solidarity, and turned them into selfish blinkered
I'm-all-right-Jack bullshitniks instead. We're living in a post-truth
world where fake news is the norm and nobody has to face up to any hard
truths any more: just believe whatever you like instead, go with your
base instincts. If that wasn't the case, the argument goes, then Trump
and the Brexiteers could never have won. In a sane world, where people
actually looked reality in the face, it never could have happened.
But again, you only have to look at a bit of history to see that the
division into a truth world and a post-truth world is a difficult one to
define with any precision. Political debate has always been awash with a
murky mixture of fact, propaganda, half-truths and downright lies.
Political policies based on careful research and good hard evidence have
always been the exception rather than the norm. I doubt if people are
really more stupid, selfish, distracted and/or hoodwinked now than they
have been in the past. I do think the left has lost its way. It's failed
to come up with a convincing counter-vision to the prevailing right-wing
monetarist only-profit-can-save-us view of things. People are feeling
the pinch, and that makes them scared of economic instability, which
makes them conservative. It's nonsense, because it's perfectly obvious
that we haven't got enough money in the system to pay for good health
care, or good care for our old people, or good education, and the answer
is not to cut back public services even harder but to put up taxes so
that everybody can make a fair contribution to the cost of the things
they really care about - but the people on the left have convinced
themselves that if you say this out loud you'll lose votes and upset the
economic apple-cart, and by gagging themselves in this way they've
basically handed the initiative in politics to the people on the right.
Bollocks to it. I think I'll move to Scotland.
- Edward
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