December 2016
By Seth Halpern, Editor Post Truth according to Oxford Dictionary is “Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief” (Editor’s Note- More simply putWe care more about things that make us emotional, than things that are factual) This term is the Oxford Dictionary’s “Word of the Year”. So, congratulations to “Post-Truth” for winning the award. Unfortunately, it means that our society is in trouble! If we are living in a Post-Truth age, what does that say about us? It says that we don’t base our thoughts, decisions, attitudes and actions on TRUTH. Instead, whatever moves us emotionally gets our
attention. This should come as no surprise if we simply look at our entertainment choices. Television used to broadcast information and entertainment to stretch the mind and imagination. In recent decades, it has given way to Reality TV. We watch a famous (or infamous) family as they are going about their daily lives until it gets boring and the producers add some fabricated drama to thicken the plot. Add that to biased activists like Michael Moore who produce documentaries that are clearly subjective. Even our network and cable news is overtly biased. I watched some of the election on Fox News AND CNN and it didn’t seem like the same election! This campaign had less to do with policy and more to
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do with publicity. It’s not only on the national level, though. Even our local and state races have become a play on our emotions, hoping to endear us to one candidate while attempting to stir outrage at their opponent. Then there’s the internet…Wait, we’re going too fast. This election year was filled with campaigns that served up lots of socalled “facts” that weren’t. It was about winning no matter what it takes. While this election was not the first to involve, half-truths or even blatant lies about their opponents, it was the brashness in which it was done that was so stunning. There seemed to be very little talk of policy and solutions. Yet, there was sure a lot of insults, denials, accusations, blame and
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the like. The media feasted on it because everyone wanted to throw another punch at their opponent. You might think that I’m speaking only of the candidates. However, the general population was in on it this year like never before. Facebook was filled with opinions and shared links about how awful the “other side” was and how honorable and blameless was their choice. (And by the way, I have found that there are plenty of biased half-truths on the conservative, far-right side as well as there are on the liberal left) Add to this the internet, with all of its blogs, opinions, and “information” which serves as a repository of “post-truth”
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