Living In a Post-Truth World

From the Department of Gaslighting Everyone

Back in the halcyon days of January 2017 we were introduced to a term that would become the bedrock of Trumpism. Two days after his first inauguration, and in the middle of significant backlash to Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s ridiculous claims about the size of the Inauguration crowd, Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway insisted that Spicer’s views of the crowds were alternative facts. Little did we know at that time how pervasive the lying would become, infiltrating nearly every aspect of not only Trump’s first administration, but throughout the interregnum that was Biden’s term as well.

Enter The Liar in Chief

Now, I am not some naif, of course I realize that politicians lie. That, unfortunately, is part and parcel of the job. Thing is, the way Trump and his admin lied about, well, everything was unprecedented and astounding. The problem was allowed to grow unabated while traditional media outlets struggled with how to cover the President’s daily lies. Through some misguided sense of norms and decorum, the legacy news organizations refrained from calling it what it was… lies.

As the media struggled to call a spade a spade, Trump’s first term lies began to have much more serious consequences. There was no real damage done by him arrogantly and stupidly trying to claim that the crowd at his inauguration was the largest ever. In perhaps his most famous public lie, a hurricane map was edited in real time to include southern Alabama in the impact cone after Trump, incorrectly, claimed that the state was in danger. Rather than a simple admission that the President had misspoke, the official charts were hamfistedly changed, and thousands of people were now “in danger”.

Of course, the entire litany of lies spewed by Trump throughout the first 3.75 years of his term paled in comparison to the assault on the Constitution he launched on Election Night 2020 when he claimed, without a shred of evidence and after the polls had barely closed, that he had won the election. Throughout the transition period he amplified this lie, on television, in print, on social media, everywhere. You could not go a day without hearing either him or his surrogates regurgitating the baseless claims of some sort of nebulous fraud that cost him the White House. These lies resulted in a direct attack on our Democracy when Trump riled up a crowd and encouraged them to attack the US Capitol in an attempt to prevent the ceremonial ratification of the election.

There was a brief period immediately after the events of January 6th when it seemed like Trump was well and truly finished. His coup failed, Biden’s election victory was certified, social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter deplatformed him, and many staunch supporters in his Republican party repudiated him. Unfortunately, as we all well know, their criticisms were shallow and when it was time to finalize the End of Trump, the GOP Senators, led by the cowardice of Mitch McConnell, failed to convict Trump during the trial for his second impeachment. So… we get what we have today.

Trump 2.0 - Now With 100% More TechBro

Back in the early days of the internet and the online wild west, it seemed like everything was free. You could find music, movies, tv shows, just tons of content, all gratis. It was beautiful, but we had to know it would end. I used to think that the absolute worst thing a tech company could do was to introduce a cool new piece of tech, get everyone to use it and get addicted to it, then announce that they were going to a subscription model. It's the classic “first taste is free” tactic from the drug dealer’s playbook, and it was as effective as it was inevitable. I know that I have more subscriptions than I would like to admit because of this business model.

What I didn’t imagine, but perhaps should have¹, was that the tech companies would, almost as one, band together to feed and nourish our Post-Factual world. And yet one by one, each of them has done so, starting with Elon Musk’s purchase and dismemberment of Twitter and on through Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Not only had social media usurped traditional media as the leading influence lever in the election, but it did so while providing a landscape replete with lies and little means to protect users from these falsehoods. The truth is obviously not important to these companies, while it is an impediment to the Trump administration, so must be dealt with accordingly.

During the 2024 campaign the social media sites were measurably biased towards the Trump campaign, and after his victory the parade of Tech CEOs making the pilgrimage to Mar A Lago included Musk, Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and more. It seemed like at least once a day one of these men would make public their $1 million “entrance fee” as a contribution to the Trump inaugural fund. Also, perhaps as a portent of things to come, the sites announced changes to their content moderation, removing fact checking in favor of (far less reliable) community notes.

The widespread, and growing, influence that social media has over our politics is a much larger discussion that this piece, and maybe I can dig into that a bit in the future. Suffice it to say that back in 2008, Barack Obama identified the power of the online world in order to build his base. Unfortunately, the Democrats seem to have leveled off in their effective use of the tool while the GOP has embraced it fully.

While the policies that Trump is attempting to implement may seem to be the most striking threat to our Democratic way of life, I would argue that the propaganda environment made possible by the irresponsible and dangerous approach to truth that is being implemented by the social media companies is far, far more critical an issue.

Take the USAID dismantling as an example. The Agency, responsible for projecting American soft power globally while providing aid and assistance to populations in crisis the world over, was the first to face Elon Musk’s (illegal and unconstitutional) axe. There are some very clear reasons as to why Musk would want to gut USAID, but those are not getting nearly the coverage that the lies about the agency have birthed.

Instead, we see lies about the agency, such as the false claim that USAID “donated” over $8 million to Politico. This was blatantly false, but it was spread on X by Musk as well as multiple members of the Trump administration and his supporters. The truth was far less salacious, but the damage was done. Musk also shared a video that claimed to show how much money USAID had given to multiple celebrities for visits to Ukraine. The video was later determined to be a product of Russian disinformation, but Musk has not rescinded his claims. In fact, he continues to rail against the agency on his website.

I wish I had a simple answer, a checklist that would help folks to realize when they are being lied to, but I don’t. I grew up with the idea that “I’ll believe it when I see it”, but we are past that now, as AI deepfakes are possible. All I can suggest is that you take the time to curate a set of information providers that you feel have a devotion to truth and use those. Also try to learn how to spot disinformation and misinformation.

Most importantly, online lying isn’t constrained to one party. There are unfortunately plenty of folks in liberal spaces online who lie just as brazenly and openly as the worst of the alt-right trolls. Make sure you are as judicious with blocking them, and don’t share anything that you can’t confirm through multiple sources.

Take care, and stay strong.

1. We are humans. We can’t have nice things, we will eventually enshitify them.