Living In An Era Of Big Lies

DONALD TRUMP, with a perfectly straight face, told the country that the persistent rumor that president Obama was born in Africa was in fact a fabrication which originated within the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, but that now, at long last, he, Donald J. Trump, was officially announcing that Barack Obama was indeed born in Hawaii, and that because of this proclamation, he, Donald J. Trump, was now finishing the controversy, once and for all, by handing down to the masses the final word on the subject. And that was that. Case closed. What Hillary R. Clinton had started years ago, Donald J. Trump was now ending. The most likely reason the entire country didn't dissolve into paroxysms of laughter at the conclusion of Donald's grand announcement was that most of it was scratching their heads in utter confusion. Or maybe dropping jaws in utter amazement. Wasn't it Donald J. Trump who spent no less than five years proclaiming to the world and anyone who would listen that Obama had indeed been born in Africa, and was therefore not qualified constitutionally to serve as president? Indeed it was he, and he did not attempt to render service by investigating and objectively finding the answer to the question of Obama's birth place, he stated as a matter of fact that the birth place was Africa, case closed. The Donald has told so many whoppers during this election that he has talked himself right out of the White House, which is quite a feat, considering that we live in a culture which seems to embrace myths, the wilder the better. Amazingly, most people really don't seem to care anymore about actual truth, actual facts, as if we have all resigned ourselves to living in a "post truth" era, in which the big lie is as good as fact based information, and the true scientific experts who try to give us facts are dismissed and marginalized as elitists and frauds. Thirty percent of the American people claim to believe that Obama is a Muslim, another thirty percent claim to believe that he was born in Africa. We all, or at least many of us, seem to believe that illegal Mexicans are pouring across the border, when in fact they are not. Vaccinations cause autism. Climate change is a Chinese hoax, or a liberal hoax, one or the other, not that it matters. The list is long, and getting longer, as we depart ever farther from reality.