Post-Truth-iness
The Oxford Dictionaries has selected post-truth as their new word for 2016:
The dictionary publisher defined post-truth as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”
It’s essentially a refinement of truthiness, Stephen Colbert’s 2005 coinage, which was the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year 11 years ago: “the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.”
The Economist wonders if, given that politicians have always lied, does it make any difference if they leave truth totally behind? I think that Britons waking up to the results of the Brexit vote and Americans seeing the results of the Presidential election would answer with a resounding ‘YES’.
Some people are not going to surrender their allegiance to the facts. The Chair of the Federal Reserve System Janet Yellen made it known that she intended to serve her entire term as the head of the independent central bank, and would not make decisions based on short-term political goals.
The government is not a business and the President is not a CEO. Drumpf is going find out about checks and balances.
