Chris Dillow — Economic roots of post-truth politics

Here’s a conjecture: the rise of “post-truth” politics (defined by the OED as a process whereby “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals”) is in part the product of deindustrialization.

What I mean is that in manufacturing, facts defeat emotions and opinions. If your steel cracks, or your bottles leak or your cars won’t start, all your hopes and fancy beliefs are wrong. Truth trumps opinion.

Contrast this with sales occupations. In these, opinion beats facts. If customers think a shit sandwich is great food, it’ll sell regardless of facts. And conversely, good products won’t sell if customers think they’re rubbish. Opinion trumps truth.

(Finance is a mix of these. In trading and asset management, beliefs are constantly defeated by cold hard facts. In asset gathering, sales and investor relations, however, bullshit works.)

Isn’t it therefore possible that a shift from manufacturing to other occupations will contribute to a decline in respect for facts and greater respect for opinions, however ill-founded? In 1966 – when employment in UK manufacturing peaked – 29.2% of the workforce were in manufacturing. This meant that millions more heard tales from fathers, husbands and friends about how brute facts had fouled up their day. A culture of respect for facts was thus inculcated. Today, however, only 7.8% of the workforce is in manufacturing and many more are in bullshit jobs. This is an environment less conducive to a deference to facts.

How people live shapes how they think. A world in which many people work in manufacturing might, therefore, have different beliefs to one in which they don’t....

Communications technology also has a large part to play? "The medium is the message," as Marshall McLuhan famously said.

Increased leisure made possible by technological advances was used chiefly to watch "the telly." Was that a factor in the great dumbing-down, especially when news became infotainment under the influence of Rupert Murdoch's highly successful business model based on tabloid "journalism?

Stumbling and Mumbling
Economic roots of post-truth politics
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

Nicolas J S Davies — The ‘Post-Truth’ Mainstream Media

U.S. mainstream media sees itself as the definer of what’s true and what’s “propaganda,” but has gotten lost in a fog of self-delusion and is now the principal purveyor of “post-truth” news, writes Nicolas J S Davies.

Good summary of the relevant information, most of which has been posted here as it happened. The post collects it.

Consortium News
The ‘Post-Truth’ Mainstream Media

Nicolas J S Davies

Christopher Preble — Americans Aren't Buying What Fact Checkers Are Selling

So, in our current state, who is the arbiter of actual truth from mere speculation? What institution or person can help us sort out what is true or false? Answer, no one. So everyone merely asserts, and people believe who and what they want to believe. Blog A’s facts are just as good as Blog B’s. Thus the phenomenon of, yes, fake news.

Indeed, increasingly it seems that a fact is only believed as such if it advances one’s preconceived notions (as noted by Stephen Schwartz). This is not confined merely to Donald Trump supporters, but the most notorious cases of beliefs widely disconnect from reality seem to be.

This is what happens when at elite becomes outrageously corrupt and untrustworthy, the society becomes dysfunctional as trust breaks down generally.

Historically, the failure of the state internally or defeat externally is not far away.  It's not by accident that this post in in The National Interest, a publication on international relations, strategy and defense.

The National Interest
Americans Aren't Buying What Fact Checkers Are Selling
Christopher Preble | vice president for defense and foreign-policy studies at the Cato Institute