Last year the Oxford English Dictionary named “post-truth” as its word of 2016. The experts at this eminent and venerable institution defined this eyebrow-raising term as “denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” While we are thankful to say goodbye to 2016, one wonders how thankful we should really be in the wake of significant, global events that happened within the emotive and unfiltered framework of “post-truth”.
We are yet to see how Brexit plays out. While there has been ongoing fallout following the vote, particularly in the diminishing value of the English pound and the potential for negative economic growth in the UK, there remains staggering incredulity that the trigger starting it all was a baseless and unsupported “post-truth”: that the UK’s membership in the European Union was costing Britons 350 million pounds each week.
That “post-truth” now explains the detachment from the empirical and the objectivity of cold, hard data, one is left wondering why the majority of voters deciding on such a significant step refused to seek the “pre-truth”, and nothing but the truth, before going to the polls. Put another way, it leaves one wondering, ‘Did they really consider what they were getting into?’
One is similarly staggered and frozen with disbelief at the rise of demagoguery in the US with the ascendancy of Donald Trump to one of the most respected and eminent offices in the world. How he accomplished this, among other things, was through convenient, intuitive, and contingent manipulation of the truth.
While there is little reassurance to be had for those who find comfort in the rather thin line that Trump lost the popular vote, at the same time he remains positioned as President-elect to ascend to the presidency later this month due to the machinations of an antiquated vote-value system in the US Electoral College.
That Trump is an expert practitioner of “post-truth” behaviour, and who from his Twitter-feed continually reveals a lack of self-discipline, self-control, and humility, will remain a sobering and anxious reminder – for however long his term lasts as President of the US – that the tips of his itchy Twitter finger could also in a moment tip the balance should our world grow unstable. This is far from comforting for those of us who would not be misled by “post-truth” manipulations.
Similarly, for those who look to the homelands, we would rather not be misled by statistical spin from Trinidad and Tobago’s National Security Minister Edmund Dillon, who when accounting for police “successes” in Port-of-Spain and environs, said murders were down by 38.1 percent in the Port-of-Spain Division, robberies by 30.1 percent, kidnappings by 75 percent, woundings and shootings by 65 percent. Last year 462 persons were murdered in Trinidad and Tobago.
For those of us living in the GTA and elsewhere in Canada, let us not be misled by such manipulation. The fact is, Trinidad and Tobago’s crime situation is out of control. Let us not forget this whenever we visit.
For the many of us who look to Guyana, we should not allow ourselves to be misled into wearing the blinders of “post-truth” that its present APNU+AFC government is committed to transparency and accountability. This has not proven to be the case despite its election promise to root out governmental corruption. It is yet to respond to Minister Harmon and the GTT money, and to clarify his trip to China; too, questions remain over the D’Urban Park project, and questions are yet to be answered surrounding the drug bond, financing, and the storage and supply of critical drugs.
Perhaps the way forward to a better year in 2017 is for each of us to remain undeterred and grounded to cold, hard and objective facts, and to call those to account who would manipulate the truth.