XFool wrote:The American Abyss
[url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html]The New York Times Magazine[/url
Excellent argument, that expresses a lot of pretty obvious points that need saying more clearly.
Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions. Truth defends itself particularly poorly when there is not very much of it around
That would have been no news to Goebbels, who wrote a whole treatise about what you could do if you could only defeat the public's faith in the truth by means of an avalanche of lies. It messes up the brain. And then the messed-up brain messes up everything else, and you've got 'em all roped and tied.
BJ