Post-Truth & Consequences

When I was once very young (no, this is not a Winnie the Pooh story) my parents allowed having few comic books. One I was permitted was titled “True Comics” with the sub-title “Truth is Far Greater than Fiction.” Great reading and the stories were all true, and exciting.

Just recently the Oxford Dictionary approved a new word, its 2016 word of the year: ‘post-truth’, meaning “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

And that’s where we are with the recent presidential campaigns, that of the GOP in particular, post-truth, and lots more.

And we’re also now starting to face the consequences of that campaign, as rhetoric gives way to reality. The swamp seem deeper each day as the president-elect surrounds himself with Wall Street notables and Washington elites, one of whom may be wealthier than he.

Consequences (and great examples of post-truth). Lookout public education. Don’t look for jobs returning or staying in the USA (the recent Carrier job-save is a great post-truth). Talk of scrapping trade agreements and imposing high import tarrifs wasn’t what Washington State’s agricultural ‘red’ counties expected when their tree fruit and wheat exports to China were threatened with reverse tariffs. Creating new jobs when unemployment rate rate is currently the lowest it has been in years, plus industry’s increasing reliance on cost-saving robotics?  Granted, 4.6 % doesn’t seem all that low when you’re making just $7.50 an hour or semi- or permanently unemployed.

And as the world grows smaller and vulnerable, retrenching from international security agreements, and perhaps more crucially, poo-pooing climate change science, doesn’t exactly give one comfort; just ask the polar bears, or if your serious, the Pacific Island folk. The whole world is our island home.

And then, if you want to go there, is the murky mix of the office of the presidency and the Trump business world (111 companies/ventures in 18 countries), plus the role of family members as senior political advisors as well as being Mr. Trump’s business managers.

But most telling of all is my reading of religious webpages, blogs, Facebook postings, and sermons. Never in recent history have so many expressed such deep concern of the outcome of the election. What I hear and read is not partisan, for the underlying issue being the contradiction between the person of the president-elect and his stated values, personal and political, and Judeo-Christian and Muslim values and the values of so many people of other faiths and those who hold to no special faith system. Ultimate hope is not diminished, but what I read are concerns for women, their reproductive rights as well as their personhood; for those marginalized; for the poor and almost poor; for the unemployed, for the immigrant and refugee, for the LGBTQ; for gender equality. All this from mainline religious groups and writers, some of whom have been threatened and even buildings vandalized for their stands.

Yet the greatest consequence from the campaign, and reinforced by Mr. Trump’s emerging advisory circle, is the dark response to his racial rhetoric of white supremacy, unleashed and given voice and permission by the election. The dark side of our country has crawled out from under the rock. (The Southern Poverty Law Center, as of November 30^th, documented 772 instances of hate crimes, higher even than those reported following 9/11).

Yes, elections do have their consequences, as Bill Penzey, of Penzey Spices recently pointed out, citing this white supremacy emergence . (Penzey’s online sales went up 59.9%, gift box sales up 135%, following his FaceBook posting, in spite of the “so-called ‘right wing firestorm.’ And, yes, they send emails of rage, and ALL CAPS, and bad language with the hope of creating the perception that they are bigger than they really are.”)

On  Friday, January 20^th, we will be inaugurating an overt racist, not to mention a sexual abuser, and more, as our 45^th president. We’ll come face-to-face with the consequences. “He tells it like it is” will take on new meaning. Those who voted for him may well, and for the most part probably will, discover disappointment and betrayal (the mark of a good con). And those who chose not to vote? Well, there again, consequences.

Let’s not accept or be seduced to the new normal. Elections do have their consequences.

But God help us.