What Type of Society Do You Want to Live In?

The degeneration of truth and the erosion of the veracity of words clouds the future. We can’t talk plainly about our circumstances if we also have waste our time chasing Whataboutisms; we can’t talk at all if every utterance is just a joke — to say a serious statement is a joke is to call all words meaningless, and listening a waste of time. We can’t build effective laws based on fantasy. We cannot have intelligent discourse if we have to entertain fanciful conspiracy theories.

Conspiracy theories give their adherents a verisimilar, cinematic views of the world that so detach them from reality that they are helpless in trying times. For example, if you call COVID-19 a conspiracy by your rivals, you do not take realistic steps to mitigate it. Conspiracy theories peel people away from reality; some find comfort there, but the comfort is like eating cotton when you are hungry. It will not sustain you.

We cannot make meaningful laws or lasting change in the USA or the world if we believe the world is molded solely by power and propaganda. Rhetorical devices like the weak ad hominem whataboutisms are used to always avoid an actual examination of reality. Post-truthers do not hold up to scrutiny, so they avoid, deny, deflect and blame, and say “what about…” while never addressing the problems broached. They appeal, against reason, solely to emotions. You can see this at work when you read the words spoken, and the words make no sense. But the fans of the speech, they have a feeling, they seek to justify the feeling.

But words in this environment don’t mean anything anyway. Everything is a joke. Making sense is to be avoided at all costs because to concede one bit of reason could give way to a tidal wave of reality. So to reason with the disingenuous whataboutist is to talk to white noise, who will avoid cogency like mercury avoids a razor.

This political movement to render all speech useless, as banal as the utterances of bar-bar, must be humiliated. It must never have power again. If words are to become meaningless, which now threaten laws written in words, then negotiation means nothing — there can be no negotiation without meaningful discourse. There cannot be a civil society without negotiation.

Good faith actors know to negotiate in the present with the knowledge that there will also be negotiations in the future. However if negotiating is not possible because communication is useless, we step into a world where there is no reason to cooperate. And it is for that reason that Post-Truth is an existential threat to the USA. America is nothing more than a blob of people’s willingness to cooperate. But cooperation will not be possible in a post-truth future.