The Post Truth Era

My hypothetical wife and I heard somebody on TV the other day mention that we are now living in The Post Truth Era, but neither of us can remember who said it or in what context. The more I think about it, I think I've heard that phrase before, but I can't remember where. Maybe it was right here at The Institute. You know, I wonder if it has always been like that only we didn't know it. When I was a kid, it seemed like all the adults told all the kids the same stories. I believed at the time that it proved that the stories were all true but, looking back at it now, maybe that's just what they wanted us to believe. For that to work, they must have all been in cahoots. Do you suppose they had regular meetings where they agreed what to tell and not tell all of us? How else could they have pulled it off, since there was no internet? The other kids, of course, told different stories but, because their stories were not nearly as consistent, I tended to discount them.

After signing off last night, I looked up "Fire and Fury". I had seen reference to it in newspaper political cartoons for a couple of days, but I didn't know what they were talking about, and now I do. This is another case of "Who do you want to believe?" One guy says one thing, and another guy contradicts him. Maybe one of them is telling the truth, or maybe neither of them are telling the truth. Maybe both of them are telling the truth as they see it, or maybe they both have been lying so long that they wouldn't recognize the truth if they did see it. Maybe I'm getting cynical in my old age, but I'm getting so that I don't believe hardly anything anymore. Then again, maybe that's why they're doing it, to get us all so that we don't believe anything. Then they will be able to do anything they want and nobody will notice. I wish I could figure out what they really want me to do so that I could do the opposite.