Post-Truth, Post-Trump

Times are weird, and still getting weirder. Donald Trump has been dragging his bloated body and a lagging Make America Great Again spirit around on national TV, ranting about voter fraud, national disgrace, and how suspicious it is that people would vote against him. Meanwhile his chances of re-election steadily approach a mathematically perfect zero (at my last check it was 1 in 20,000 for him to win PA and stretch out the delusion). Trying his best to kick up a civil war on his way out the door.

But forget politics. Trump living under such a big spotlight for four years, where he has been one of the most highly visible behavioural examples in the public sphere, anywhere on Earth, has likely, in itself, pushed civilisation a good half century forwards on a dark trajectory it might not have pursued past its first baby steps—even if it had taken those first steps before Trump came on the scene. The path to a world like what Mike Judge envisioned in Idiocracy (2006) has been dramatically shortened by his term, and at its core lies a radical contempt for truth.

We are staring into the abyss of a post-truth world, in all its technicoloured dim-wittedness and bold scumbaggery, defiant bubbleheaded immorality and idiotic certainty of mind. Visions of various dark reaches of the human soul—of unbound greed and self-interest, sly and wilful idiocy, and lazy indifference set like stubborn stains into the souls of millions—haunt more powerfully than ever.