Your Eyewitness hears that we’re in the “post truth” age. Does this mean we’ve reached a point where we’ve gone beyond “truth” and “lies”, and they’re all the same? So, we can say whatever we feel like saying and it’s alright? Pinnochio’s nose will retain its size?? Not that we couldn’t always say what we wanted, but if there were no correspondence between your assertions and the world, you’d soon be consigned to the nearest madhouse!! Well, that’s what we call the institution in our dear mudland, isn’t it?? More specifically, the “Berbice Madhouse”??
One of exemplars of this “post truth” age was no other that the 45th President of the US of A – Donald Trump. The Washington Post – which evidently had the manpower to keep track – enumerated 30,573 “untruths” he uttered during his 4-year term between 2017 and 2021. That’s an astounding 21 fibs told EVERY DAY FOR 4 YEARS!! The man should get a prize for that, if nothing else!! That’s fidelity to a cause – the cause of the dawning of the age of “post truth”!!
Now, it is not inconsequential that Trump’s most fervent (and fanatical) followers are the hardcore Christian fundamentalists from the Bible belt. And this even though the Bible warns, “The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy.” It means, therefore, that Trump and his supporters don’t consider themselves lying – even though evidence to the contrary might abound!! Didn’t the Bible hint at this tendency when it said that “those that have ears should hear and those with eyes should see”??
The truth is, folks hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see. The scientific revolution ushered in an era wherein folks should look at the “evidence” before making claims. But that’s now gone for channa! So, to clinch the argument, your Eyewitness just heard that Rep. Liz Cheney – the most fearsome and resolute Republican opponent of former President Trump’s lies about the 2020 election – was rejected by Wyoming voters in her own party on Tuesday night!! Imagine that!! Daughter of Dick Cheney, George Bush’s VP, who defended Trump throughout his presidency but just couldn’t stomach his claim that the elections were rigged, has now lost her Congressional seat for calling for evidence on his claim!!
Now, this is a claim that led to an invasion of Capitol Hill, in which people lost their lives!! The election was rigged because Trump and his partisans say it was rigged!! If in the beginning God created the world with his “word”, then it seems that our world can now be created by some folks simply uttering their “word”!!
From where your Eyewitness sits, as a WI PM said, “This will not end well”!!
…in Kenya
Your Eyewitness has been following the elections in ethnically-divided Kenya, so’s to learn if all the innovations made since 2007 in the political and electoral systems would’ve headed off violence after general elections. Doesn’t look that way – and, as such, doesn’t bode too well for similar efforts here by some perennially hopeful folks to introduce similar measures here for the same reason.
In Kenya, it didn’t matter that the Elections Commission didn’t use spreadsheets and bedsheets to kerfuffle the vote tabulation. They posted on the web the results of every one of the 46,332 polling stations in the country for citizens to make their own tabulation. But yet, in the end, there’s violent disagreement about the announced result that “the outside” candidate William Ruto won the presidency!! It’s been clear for some time that Kenya – like Guyana – had entered the post truth age!
But, in the past, we were dismissed as aberrations in the “Third Word”. Now, after Trump??
…and punctuation
Some readers have been asking about your Eyewitness’s use of a combined exclamation point and a question mark – !?! – in this space!! Now, this isn’t an invention of his. Would you believe it represents asking a question with a raised eyebrow – an “interrobang”!?
