A couple of years ago in the run up to the 2016 US election, I happened to stumble upon Newt Gingrich being interviewed on some US cable news program.\u00a0 He was stumping for Trump and the interviewer was quizzing him about one of the innumerable falsehoods the Candidate was peddling on the campaign trail.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt simply isn\u2019t true,\u201d the newsman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat doesn\u2019t matter,\u201d replied Gingrich smugly, \u201cWhat matters is people believe<\/em> it\u2019s true.\u201d<\/p>\n This was early in the campaign, before fake news became the mantra of Trump\u2019s MAGA movement, but as the months wore on and events south of the border became increasingly surreal and detached from reality, Gingrich\u2019s comment came back to me again and again, more troubling with every visitation.<\/p>\n Troubling, because it was an affront to everything I hold to be true. Against all odds, against all evidence, against all fact: people will believe what they want to believe.<\/p>\n (Considered from a meta-viewpoint, it occurred to me that this is perhaps the mystery that underpins all religious faith: when there is absolutely no empirical proof of something, yet people believe it anyway.\u00a0 What did I read recently? When one hundred people believe a falsehood, it\u2019s fake news. When one billion believe, it\u2019s a religion. Discuss.)<\/p>\n Bottom line is that we are living in a society that doesn\u2019t know what to believe.\u00a0 But if you thought things were bad now, they\u2019re going to get worse.\u00a0 Check this out.<\/p>\n