Tendency or Casualty

Buckminster Fuller once said 'truth is a tendency," while Philip Snowden, who may have been channeling Aeschylus, popularized 'truth is the first casualty in war.' For just about the last decade, the topography and landscape of corporate communications have undergone extensive if not radical reshaping, rendering truth nearly a moot point. 

There was a time, before the last ice age, sorry the current administration doesn't believe in global warming (or, by extension, global cooling) when everyone worked to have a website. Just get a website were the watchwords used by all and sundry. But that's all so 1994ish now as we've migrated to social media platforms and beyond. I'm still trying to understand why for so many folks CNN dot.com doesn't have the cache or credibility that their Facebook page does. 

And don't get me started on the importance of having a twitter feed, or two (or more). I have an account but use it like twice a day because I cannot figure out how to follow conversations happening in the twitsophere, despite the popularity that the small-minded and small-handed Chief Executive has brought to the platform. 

In this new age of I say it and you can decide to believe it or not, and truth doesn't seem to enter into it in any way, we are running faster and faster as we, in my opinion, circle the drain. 

Not sure when the truth became a fashion accessory, I guess, because it's no longer an absolute, starting at the very top of our national food chain. When you have a manipulative, mendacious media creation as President, you have to wonder about our decision-making ability as a country. 

I found myself choosing to believe the alleged lunatic running the Philippines in the wake of the US president's recent Asian trip when the former's office assured us that the latter never raised human rights issues while the pair were in bilateral conversations. I rationalized, in light of everything Trump has lied about since stepping into the Republican Presidential primaries, why would he tell the truth now.

It took me a moment to realize I'm thinking about the President of the United States, whose office's reputation for honesty and veracity should be beyond reproach and above question except for the broken-down real estate grifter currently occupying it. Think I'm being harsh? Think again. Here's a bean count on his balderdash, broken promises, and bullshit last tabulated during the late summer. It hasn't gotten better and it won't.

When honesty becomes a relative term and a fungible commodity you can't tell truth from lies which, in our culture, means we are losing our moral compass and slowly sinking into a morass of tribal suspicions where we place Infowars and the New York Times on the same scale and think we're being even-handed. One of my local newspapers asked its readers on Tuesday "who do you believe most about whether the Russian government meddled in the 2016 presidential election?" and over 50% of those answering said they believed the Prevaricator in Chief.     

Buddha once said, "Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." I'm thinking the current occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue had better be praying for permanently overcast skies. For my part, I don't mind rain or snow in the forecast as long as it leads to the truth.
-bill kenny