The recent establishment moral panic over ‘post-truth’ is deeply revealing…
Even if the post-truth conspiracy theory, perhaps, is not half as deep itself, as the talented mediocrities of the Potomac Cesspool would be inclined to insinuate.
1. Rather than being based on an objective, dispassionate interpretation of the evidence, ‘post-truth’ fashionable nonsense is inevitably founded upon bestial pre-reflexive emotivism, brutish Neanderthal sentimentalism, and a simply horrific regard for any kind of empirically and logical entertainable process of inquiry.
If that’s not ‘post-truth,’ then I don’t know what is!
2. In keeping with this, there is a disconcerting slippage between the presentation of the post-truth ‘thesis’ as a serious theoretical proposition, and the abject, self-debasing nudge-nudge-wink-winkery of ‘Oh, why it’s just a bit of rhetoric, old bean… but pray don’t suffer the little kiddiebuggers to know about that one, or they shan't sleep a single bally wink tonight!’
Well, if the Blue Neocons have recently some sought not-so-exotic bedfellows in Not-So-Wild Bill Kristol (a transparently fragile and delicate establishment treasure with a heart of glass!), the cynical piractic lunacy of being able to knock-and-run from a ‘serious proposition’ to a mere rhetorical conceit is worthy of the elder Godfather himself:
There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work.
These words are from Irving Kristol. Like father, like son, and by your fruits shall ye know them.
It that’s not ‘post-truth,’ then I don’t know what is!
Outright historical negationism concerning the significance (both pragmatically speaking and in principle) of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s extravagantly belligerent feats of humanitarian aggression?
This is not post-truth.
Highly suspicious ‘fake news’ about WMDs, based on an uncritical subservience to government ‘information’ worthy of a craven 1930s Two Pfennig Eichmann?
This is not post-truth.
Attributing some kind of substantial significance (perhaps a rather euphemistic characterization on my part?) to anonymous sources who (providing, of course, they do indeed exist) may or may not be who they claim to be, may or may not be in a position to know what they claim to know, and who ultimately, may or may not be any kind of remotely reliable informant whatsoever?
This is not post-truth.
Dishonestly smearing a wide variety of independent media sources, disingenuously juxtaposing serious and critical outlets alongside a handful of outright bizarre and conspiratorial outlets, in order to confuse any ‘educated idiot’ who should be unwary and gullible enough to believe that whatever is written in a broadsheet is automatically more reliable than the trash found in The Sun or the late and not so lamented News of the World?
This is not post-truth.
Ultimately, whenever the outrageously arrogant, idly incontinent, unsurpassably imbecilic horde of useful idiots, unpaid shills, media collaborators and publicity-hungry fellow travellers of Big Clintonism appeal to their highly selective, hysterically emotive and unspeakably crass and self-serving myth of ‘post-truth…’
They are promoting an intrinsically ideological notion, and not any remotely recognizable attempt at sincere political or otherwise ‘philosophical’ discourse.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.
