The most frightening thing for me is the emergence of the post-truth era. It’s so Orwellian.
I suppose there are parts of the world where this has always existed, but in the Western developed World, it has been Trump who has claimed ‘black’ is in fact ‘white’, and vice versa. The writing was on the wall just after his Inauguration when he claimed he had a bigger audience than Obama. He continued the lie even when photographic evidence of the event were put side by side. This was followed by Kellyanne Conway’s breathtaking defence of ‘alternative facts’. Trump would tell a lie, and then another, and then another. The very existence of truth and empiricism began to vanish before our very eyes.
His example was of course followed by Balsonaro, Orban, Modi and then our own Boris Johnson. Johnson would lie, and then repeat the lie and repeat it again. The whole nation was gaslighted into believing fantasy mantras ….
20,000 new police officers, 40 new hospitals, the vaccine rollout was because we’d left the European Medicines Agency etc etc..
If we don’t have truth, or if we no longer understand what ‘truth ‘ is, we have nothing.
And that is what I find so terrifying.
