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MIKE Pence, smooth as the politician he is, was called on to explain Trump’s tweet that he would have won the popular vote if it wasn’t for the millions of ‘illegal votes’ cast, on This Week with host George Stephanopoulos.
He starts by shifting the ground significantly: “Well, I think the president-elect wants to call to attention the fact that there has been evidence over many years of voter fraud…” (nope, that’s not what the PEOTUS said, he was talking about this election).
Then he says that part of Trump’s secret is that he’s ‘refreshing’ to the American public because he speaks his mind.
“But why is it refreshing to make false statements?” asks Stephanopoulos.
“Look, I don't know that that is a false statement, George, and neither do you.” (Despite the available evidence that it is in fact false.)
And, in closing, “…he's going to say what he believes to be true and I know that he's always going to speak in that way as president”.
What he believes to be true…
It’s a great illustration of the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016: post-truth, "an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief'."
Following Herman Mashaba’s declaration that he would not tolerate illegal immigrants in Joburg, I got involved in an FB discussion in which one participant stated, firmly, that 80% of crimes in South Africa are committed by illegal immigrants. (When I asked for the evidence, she eventually said: “Oh, well, it may be 30%”. Post-truth is not always immutable…)
There are, looking at the best available figures (see AfricaCheck’s story on this last year) maybe 2.2 million undocumented immigrants in our country. We have a prison population of just over 160 000, with foreign prisoners representing 6.3% of that (note: I can’t find figures that show how many of those foreigners are illegal) or a little over 10 000.
Of course most criminals are not in prison (but that’s matter for another discussion); let’s assume that ten times the number are operating outside, only occasionally inconvenienced by having to bribe a cop (see Paul McNally’s great book, The Street, on this subject).
I’d assume the proportions remain similar – which would mean about 100 000 foreign criminals. Poor things; the burden of committing 80% of the crimes in this country! It conjures up an animated cartoon of hard-working men in masks labouring night and day to reach their quotas, sweat flying as they labour to keep up their image as the worst criminal element in town…
Post-truth: appeals to emotion and personal belief.
Anytime you stray into terrain that simmers with emotion and personal belief, take salt with you, so you can dose everything with a pinch.
Vegan or carnivore – ideology and huge emotions coat every fact cited, so that it all needs careful checking; politics – check all info punted by either the hard right or the left (that’s moved so far left, it’s in danger of coming full circle and colliding with the right); animal welfare – it’s all too easy to succumb to the shock-stories, especially if, like me, you care; but check them carefully, drill back to sources, and you’ll often find the real situation is not quite as painted. It may even have been totally made up, pictures and all (if I could require one thing of social media denizens, it’s to check the sources of pictures!).
Just as the world of medicine (a huge breeding ground for post-truths) is being driven back onto the ropes, with a growing demand for evidence-based practice and revelations about just how far from evidence-based many familiar drugs, procedures and treatments have been, the rest of the world seems to have come unmoored from reality.
It’s rampant on social media, of course. If I could only get someone to fund me, I could easily spent a 16-hour day correcting misinformation online. Both professional and amateur commentators utter post-truthinesses constantly.
But so what? As CNN commentator Scottie Nell Hughes said recently: “People that say that facts are facts — they’re not really facts… there’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore of facts.”
Ah. But facts are rather spiky little things and they have a habit of making themselves felt sooner or later. Often in deadly fashion. For example, “In 2008, claims circulating unchecked in South African townships about foreigners ‘getting all the best jobs’ or being involved in unsolved crimes, led to a wave of xenophobic attacks that left more than 50 people dead.” (Peter Cunliffe-Jones, AfricaCheck)
Some false stories don’t matter (was Ned Ludd leader of the Luddites, as one local columnist mentioned recently? Well, no, but so what…); others matter a great deal. Because they can shift our world on its axis.
The interrogation of claims made by politicians, corporates, NGOs, private citizens – the outing of the facts – is crucial to a living democracy. It is what good journalists have always been trained to do, and is a skill we should seek to protect in our society.
Without true information, we’re wrapped in a comfort blanket woven from emotions and personal beliefs that don’t challenge us, that mean we don’t have to deal with cognitive dissonance or uncertainties. So we are not equipped to make the hard decisions that will work for the wellbeing of our older selves and our children. Truth matters. Truth ignored comes back to bite you.
So there’s the million-dollar question: what can we do to ensure truth shines through a post-truth world?
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on Twitter.
