Alternative Truths
by Bob Brown
“Elections have consequences,” Barack Obama told riled up Republican critics three
days after becoming U.S. president in 2009. “And at the end of the day, I won.”
Yes, elections have consequences. Donald Trump’s Electoral
College victory in 2016 has had wide-ranging consequences that many Americans
had never dreamed likely, from unraveling four decades of environmental
regulation to promoting a “Great, Great Wall” along America’s southwestern
border. A small but telling consequence of Trump’s triumph is that the Oxford
English Dictionary’s 2016 “word of the year” was “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.”
days after becoming U.S. president in 2009. “And at the end of the day, I won.”
Yes, elections have consequences. Donald Trump’s Electoral
College victory in 2016 has had wide-ranging consequences that many Americans
had never dreamed likely, from unraveling four decades of environmental
regulation to promoting a “Great, Great Wall” along America’s southwestern
border. A small but telling consequence of Trump’s triumph is that the Oxford
English Dictionary’s 2016 “word of the year” was “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.”