Monday, June 20, 2016

What's in a phrase? Post-truth politics

In an Economist article discussing the pros of a Remain vote in the Brexit referendum, there was this sentence:
Yet in the post-truth politics that is rocking Western democracies, illusions are more alluring than authority.
So true.
So sad.

Later in the article, this sentence appears:
Thus the Leave campaign scorns the almost universally gloomy economic forecasts of Britain’s prospects outside the EU as the work of “experts” (as if knowledge was a hindrance to understanding). 
Looking south from Canada to the travesty that is the Trump candidacy, we see the same attitude, as if only the ignorant can know the truth.

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