I’ve got to admit to struggling to get my head around the now. I thought maybe it was a generational thing, and there may be some truth to that yes. However, if I am honest, if we are still allowed to be honest, I think the issue might be that I do not have a strategy to cope with a post-truth era.

I’m hopeful that one day all this nonsense will end, that the president of the US will be once again a real person and not a character that has come to believe he is in actuality the fiction that his internal ego monologue writes, but for now I just wish to quell the turmoil by thinking about what I can do to keep my head on straight..

I watched a Doug Stanhope piece called “killer closer” where he said that he couldn’t believe that the world was still bitching on about certain issues, because he thought he had solved them long ago in his comedy shows. That it was like there are people wandering about starving and looking for food, yet he had pointed out where the food was, and they just wouldn’t eat it, instead they stuck it in their ears and up their asses, then complained again that they were starving. I think what he is saying, in a comedic way, is that man is an animal that can be fully aware what it should do, yet still doesn’t do it, then complains about the outcome that results anyway. I think he is indicating that we need to shoulder the blame and stop looking for someone or something else to blame for the reality we are in.

Life is similar to what Stanhope jokes about, we are surrounded by the solutions we need for every problem we have, yet we have people still chewing over how to solve the problems we have, refusing to see the obvious solutions, and in many cases erecting unnecessary barriers to them, because they can’t find a way for the obvious solutions to suit themselves personally. In a capitalist world, the only actions that are seen/accepted as viable, by those that hold the wealth and power to influence the thoughts of others, are those actions that increase that wealth and power, everything else is a non runner and will be propagandised as such to the point where the populous will come to believe that non truth to be a truth or the undeniable unarguable truth. That’s what I am talking about, and that’s what I struggle to accept. You see I am a solutions guy, I think that humans can solve just about anything…

In the pandemic we saw where governments could do things and quickly, where they could set things in motion and free up resources to achieve something. Unfortunately what they achieved, in Britain at least, was a grand larceny. The point is made though, actions can happen to solve problems, it’s just that most of the time there is some legislation that prevents that action because it does not benefit the persons who created the legislation. In France a person can build their own Eco-friendly house, in Britain that is an almost impossible task because of the laws that prevent it. Now why would that be? Could we expect that those laws were made by people with an interest in house building, specifically by the particular method they happen to offer and benefit from?

In Trump and Starmer’s worlds the truth will become that which is underpinned by power, and if we put our history hats on we will realise that for most of the time that there has been societies this has been the case. It is only in the 20th century that it has been possible for a peasant to know more and be more correct than a king, for nearly all of history might has been right, this is a structural truth. The 20th century brought us mass education, free books, the internet, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, historical revision, and the rights that allow people to disagree with institutions of power. I feel that a lot of the political and judicial changes of recent years have been an effort to undo a lot of the 20th century’s gained freedoms that present challenge to power. An aware and well educated populous may be able to reverse power or topple it. Power has to act to protect itself by handcuffing and hobbling these objects of freedom. Capture freedoms within a legislation that serves power more than it does liberty.

My strategy now must be to accept that I can know what is untrue and rally against it, facing the consequences of that, or to know what is untrue yet act like it is truth, merely suspecting that other also know better. What I cannot do is accept that something false is true, I’d have to be an American for that one.

Paul S Wilson