Post Truth Society

Yesterday, Theresa May triggered Brexit. And with a phalanx of fossil fuel executives standing behind him, Trump gutted the Clean Power Plan, Obama’s attempt (against the will of the Republican congress) to bring America in line with the Paris Agreement.

These are parallel tragedies. The gloom and doom over what Brexit will mean for Northern Ireland is so pronounced that I wonder whether owning a house is a good idea. Trump’s sop to the coal industry will either increase emissions or slow the reduction in emissions--unthinkable when ice shelves are cracking and sea levels rising.

The US and UK are turning their backs on everything I know to be a good idea--reversing climate change and increasing cooperation against external threats (Russia, jihad, and now America). The EU is a bastion of human and environmental rights and of using soft skills to counter extremism. Just as West Germany integrated East Germany, Europe has been integrating former Soviet countries in eastern Europe--a better alternative to poverty, Russian domination, war. Britain saying we’ll be better off on our own is self sabotage when Europe is its biggest trading partner--and will seek a pound of flesh for Britain’s profligacy.

What has happened? How can science, rational thought, democratic progress all be scuppered in such a short time? I think historians will finger the outright lies that politicians were allowed to sell to the public. Trump is just a lie machine. Farage and his crowd covered double decker buses with promises that Britain would save 350 pounds/week if it left EU, money that would be spent on hospitals. The votes were no sooner counted than Farage admitted that that wasn’t true. If people are lied to relentlessly and vote based on those lies, how can the vote stand?

The internet and social media have played a nefarious role in our post-truth society. Apparently the same bots that steer me to flights to Spain if I’ve just looked at a flight to Spain can also feed right-leaning people with fake news stories about Hillary Clinton killing children or about climate change being a hoax. Computer scientists are studying the webs within the web and concluding that bots controlled by Russian and right-wing groups are metasticising the cancer that is the paranoid right.

"The information networks we’ve built are almost perfectly designed to exploit psychological vulnerabilities to rumour,” as one scientist put it.

I can’t vote here and I think it’s wise to keep a low profile in terms of political activism, given my contingent status. I don’t see how I can support activism in the states from here, other than giving money to organisations I believe in. The bottom line is we are living in depressing times and I for one am unclear on what I can do about it.
3-30