Former George W. Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner did an excellent job of capturing what the 2020 presidential election will be about when he wrote that it will be “a referendum on reality and epistemology.”
Trump and his apparatchiks will not only step up their propaganda; they will increase their efforts to exhaust our critical thinking and to annihilate truth, in the words of the Russian dissident Garry Kasparov. We will see even more “alternative facts.” We will see even more brazen attempts to rewrite history. We will hear even more crazy conspiracy theories. We will witness even more lashing out at reporters, more rage, and more lies.
“The real opposition is the media,” Steve Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, once told the journalist Michael Lewis. “And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”…
Donald Trump is asking us to enter even further into his house of mirrors. He is asking us to live within a lie, to live within his lie, for four more years. The duty of citizenship in America today is to refuse to live within that lie.