2016 is bidding adieu having gifted us ‘post-truth’ as the word of the year, thanks to the Oxford Dictionaries. Is the concept new, however? Haven’t emotions and personal beliefs been more influential in shaping our ‘truths’ than objective facts throughout history? Otherwise, why did religions and their gods continue to wield such power over us perennially? Nationalism, Jihadism, Trumpism, Modiism, and a whole range of isms would not have succeeded as they did if objective facts held sway over shaping of public opinions. ‘Post-truth’ is just a euphemism for falsehood, deception, chicanery and all the lies that have dominated politics and human affairs from time immemorial. There’s nothing new about it except that it’s a new word. Only the word is new, not the concept, not the implications. Throughout history political leaders used various tricks to deceive their people. We have words like Machiavellian and Goebbelsian which came from real people who used inhuman
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