What a difference an evening can make. Late on Tuesday, November 8 of last year, it became shockingly apparent to the world that New York real estate magnate Donald Trump, reviled by many, was going to be the 45th President of the United States. Most people, with a few notable exceptions, thought his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would win it. Instead, Mrs. Clinton's quest for her dream job was denied by the people.
Another casualty from the election night was the credibility of the mainstream media. Outlet after outlet went public with the question, "How did we get it so wrong?" Shortly afterward came the pledges of soul-searching. New York Times publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., promised an examination of how they cover elections and he "rededicated" his newspaper to honest reporting.
Eight days after Trump's victory at the American polls, Oxford Dictionaries released its choice for Word of the Year. It was "post-truth". That's actually two words, but anyway. The term "post-truth" is supposed to designate the times we live in, namely, an age of relativism where truth is subjective, something that suits you - a kind of "You have your truths and I have mine" way of thinking. Absolutes and objective truth, we are led to believe, are so last century and are pretty much dead. Of course, truth cannot really die. It is not an object of power. If the whole world believes the Orwellian equation that 2+2=5, then the whole world is wrong. 2+2=4 and 4 exclusively. There is no "inclusiveness" of alternative answers to the sum of 2+2.
Disregard for the truth, however, is another matter. It makes media stars out of people like Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump. It came back to bite Trudeau, though. The evidence that truth is still very much alive presented itself, oddly enough, in Canadian media types. They recently mocked Trudeau's praise for Fidel Castro with their @trudeaueulogies tweets. Even Maclean's magazine called Justin a laughingstock. Everyone knows that the good things Trudeau said about Castro weren't true. The North American disregard for truth caused enough fed up people to elect Donald Trump as POTUS. His election has created a backlash from the alternative right (the "Alt-Right", it is called) and now people like Richard Spencer of the National Policy Institute (the "Hail Trump!" guy) will get more attention. They and others will combat the lies of the Left with their own set of lies, the lies of the Alt-Right. Aside: according to the Toronto Star's political fact-checkers, Donald Trump lied 104 times during the presidential debates to Hillary Clinton's 13 lies. Some would call the Star's findings biased against Trump because that particular daily leans to the political Left. However, the point is, Trump didn't need to be truthful to win the election. He just had to get Fed Up America on his side and he did it by getting them angry, by being politically incorrect. That also works in a "post-truth" age.
If we really live in a "post-truth" world, why is everyone so upset with lies being told by Mr. Trump? If truth doesn't matter because we are past all that, then it simply doesn't matter what Donald Trump or any other leader says. So, if you want to believe that the world is now "post-truth", go right ahead. But if you keep getting upset by people who lie then you are declaring that the very idea of a "post-truth" world is just another lie itself.
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