Life in a fact-free zone: Will we ever have truth again?

The America I grew up in has been damaged forever. A large segment of the population now lives in a fact-free zone where lies don't matter, the truth is whatever you want it to be and anybody who tells you different is either a “libtard,” a Communist or just plain stupid.

There is no buffer between those who believe the news media and those who don't, or between legitimate news sources and phony web sites, or between extremist web sites like Occupy Democrats on the left -- which exaggerates stories with blockbuster headlines it can't prove -- and Breitbart on the right, which simply makes stuff up as it goes along.

The dumbing down of America is nearly complete. It's now a bad thing to be intelligent. That makes you "an elitist," or “part of the rigged system,” or my favorite, “low information.”  How’s that for irony?

After a campaign built on lies, I’m convinced that no Liberal will ever again believe anything that comes from the Right, and vice versa. I don’t see any chance that Congress will set aside party loyalty and actually work to improve our country. And I don’t see any media voice or other moderator with the credibility to be believed when they try to point this out. 

I do see surrogates for the president-elect of the United States saying “there are no facts” and “lies are not lies if you don’t know the truth.”

I do see media outlets letting them get away with it while trying to “normalize” the Trump presidency.

I do see people who habitually vote against their own self-interest because they are either too lazy or too disinterested or, yes, too stupid to know what their own best interests are and who is best qualified to serve them.

That’s why, for example, people who live on Social Security and Medicare will vote for Republicans who want to take those things away. It’s why West Virginians voted in a Republican Legislature that turned around and screwed the voters in every way possible...and then re-elected them two years later.

I have an even harder time explaining the 42% of eligible voters who don’t bother to vote at all.

I suppose this country can survive this turmoil – at least until climate change puts us all under water – but I’m not totally convinced. We wouldn’t be the first great civilization to fail. I’m especially worried about the kind of country our children will have and their children after that.

As for me, well, I’ll be dead in a few years, so it doesn’t much matter. In the meantime, you can find me here, watching the wheels go ‘round and expressing my opinions and hoping that I can help change things or that somebody can prove me wrong.