Obviously, it is justified to worry about whether truth still matters. It is increasingly easy to silo oneself off from much of the world and reinforce any belief, no matter its validity. Certain media outlets have basically adopted this as their mission statement and it is clearly dangerous.
One thing we have on our side though is that truth will always exist outside of our belief in it and it will always matter greatly. If the bridge ahead is out, no amount of lying, obfuscation, or deception will stop you from crashing over the edge. Certainly in a post-modern world our perception of and relationship to reality (and, in turn, truth) can be manipulated. But it is impossible to completely detach yourself from the real world. What' smore is that many people still care about the truth--enough for me to believe that it is possible to combat the attempts at creating a post-truth age.
However, it does seem like our political and social culture has at times adopted a post-context nature. Again, the bridge ahead being out may be indisputable, but what it means for the circumstances of our life can be interpreted.
The need for context manifested itself in the discussion around the boos and chants of "lock him up" that met Trump during his appearance at game 5 of the World Series last night. Of course, the pundit class that views itself as the caller of balls and strikes (I know, boo me) for the political world wasted no time in ignoring any sort of contextual factors around this spontaneous display of small-d democracy.
It would be easy to meet this kind of "analysis" with a dril tweet and move on. But it does represent a particular insidiousness in the state of discourse. As many people pointed out, the chant of "lock him up" was a crowd flipping Trump's own dangerous words against him, a moment of stark relief for someone used to inciting crowds against his own political enemies. Further, Trump has actually been credibly accused of crimes such as obstruction of justice while the target of his ire, Hillary Clinton, was recently cleared of any wrongdoing. Perhaps things are less clownish than Morning Joe perceives.
Indeed, the errors made by Scarborough and others spring from an overreliance on believing in a surface-level Truth and a willingness to ignore any deeper context. Trump is right now embroiled in an impeachment inquiry over his abuse of power and attempts to use the office of the president for personal political gain. He has dangerous authoritarian tendencies and has attempted (and probably succeeded) in using his position to enrich himself. The baseball crowd that expressed its displeasure with Trump (a feeling which polling tells us many people share) is collectively wielding a voice to combat that corruption, albeit in a small way. So yes, the words "lock her up" and "lock him up" look almost identical. Yet, there are many important differences if you bother to look.
What's more is that the concept of context hasn't always been roundly ignored and is sometimes tactfully deployed. Often we are asked to judge historical figures by the standard of their time, even if these standards are concocted and incomplete. Mentioning the slaveowning of the founding fathers is out-of-bounds because that was just how things were back then. No matter that John Jay--the first Supreme Court Chief Justice and co-author of the Federalist Papers--was the founder of the New York Manumission Society or that any enslaved person at the time of the founders probably had strong feelings about the evil that was slavery. Those aren't the contexts that support a preordained feeling about the situation, so therefore they aren't valid. When context is perceived as convenient, it is utilized; when it mucks up a false equivalence, it is tossed to the side.
Post-context isn't reserved for our Sunday show panels or historical arguments, however. Recently in Wisconsin a school security officer was fired after he was called the n-word by a student and then repeated the word back to the student, urging them not to use that kind of offensive language. Again, the absurdity of a contextless truth that views all uses of a word as equivalent led to an unjust and baffling outcome. (Since then, the guard has been hired back, but the initial point stands). Without rehashing the ever-so-tiresome "why can't I use this word when I hear it in rap songs" debate, we can see that circumstances are every bit as important to the judgment of events and that to leave out context only ends up hurting our ability to reason, not strengthening it.
As with almost all discussions about politics, the underlying issue here is power and the mechanisms of its use. Ignoring the contextual divide between the powerful and the powerless only serves those who seek to wield that power dangerously and at the expense of those without it. Equating Trump's dangerous rhetoric with the pushback of a crowd of citizens neglects the fact that Trump's position of power makes his views on the rule of law especially important. He has the power to ruin lives when he plays fast and loose with concepts of justice and equality. A baseball crowd, no matter how uncivil their mocking might be, does not wield that power. Further, a black security guard who is the victim of a racial slur is not the same as the person wielding that hate-filled epithet. Historically the former has been stripped of their power by the ideology that empowers the latter.
With the way we have seen attempts to distort reality and the truth, I share many people's apprehension over a post-truth society. However, the way to combat a lack of adherence to the truth is not through reasoning that is blind to context or circumstance. When there is this much on the line, we need to look past the surface and make an effort to understand a more complete picture.
