I’ve been thinking a lot about truth in rhetoric and how distressing the last several years have been and where we go from here. I think everyone can agree that politics isn’t an overly honest business in the first place but for some reason, the bold, giant lies have increased

By the time one lie is discovered, they’re on to the next one. My distress stems from any lack of meaningful consequence for a wholesale unmooring from the truth. Previously being exposed as a liar would at least fill people with a deterrent shame. No such shame exists here.

I want to believe this is a Trump problem and that once he’s gone, disingenuous and entirely fictional rhetoric will recede but I’m afraid it’s too late. The playbook is already out there. All you have to do is never back down and then pivot. “Oh yeah? What about the laptop?”

Truth, or at least a reasonably agreed upon set of facts, is vital to a functioning society. Everyone makes mistakes of fact but the farther we drift from the expectation of evidenced rhetoric, the easier it becomes for dishonest people with bad intentions to take advantage of us

Anyway I don’t have an answer here, or at least not an easy one. It’s just something that lives in the back of my mind and tugs at my worry bells. Happy Saturday.