We are heading into an era that is the incarnation of the old joke. We’re going from not being able to tell a lie to not being able to tell the truth to not being able to tell the difference. Not being able to tell the difference is the worst outcome. Once we are there, all the facts in the world become irrelevant. You can’t marshal facts to prove a case, because nobody believes in or cares anymore about facts, or cases. It’s just outcomes. Enforceable outcomes.

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Want an example? Gerrymandering. The facts may be disputed, but they are knowable. The results are also knowable: an absolute perversion of the popular vote in a representative democracy. Nobody will defend this directly. But the question of right or wrong has been swept out to sea along with the question of true vs. false. Gerrymandering is not in dispute, nor is it defensible, and it is certainly fixable, but it won’t be fixed.

It won’t be fixed because the standard now is strong vs. weak. The strong prosper by gerrymandering, and they will fend off weak attempts to reform it. They will not explain their actions, they will simply enact them. Any subsequent debate is then just a meaningless argument between sets of alternative facts.