“Post-truth” is a term that refers to the widespread documentation of, and concern about, disputes over public truth claims in the 21st century. Oxford Dictionaries popularly defines it as “relating to and denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” While the term was used in phrases like “post-truth politics” academically and publicly before 2016, in 2016 the term was named Word of the Year by Oxford Dictionaries after the term’s proliferation in the election of president Trump in the United States and the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom.
We are in 2024 now. It is a sad state of affairs History, if not learned from, tends to repeat itself. A female Presidential candidate has been rejected by the citizens of the United States of America again. Psephologists have given out various factors: ranging from the Democratic party’s stand on Palestine, the Gen-Z voters not turning up on the ballots, the sexist mindset of the voters, to the simpler (if impractical) solutions provided by Trump to complex economical and social problems. Let it not go unrecognized: A convicted felon has just become the President of the United States of America.
Why? The answer is simple: hate and fear mongering are primal human emotions that are easy to understand. Unsurprisingly, they are an essential component to the basis of religious ideologies; hence, it becomes easier to brand “abortion” as “blasphemy”. Trump stuck to his guns: simple, loud and often repeated phrases of hate and othering did the trick like in 2016. The Democratic party needs to introspect how after 8 years, they still are not able to get people to understand the other primal human emotions to counter: love & care. Maybe, “love” and “care” sounded hollow and hypocritical when the VP could not take a definitive stand for the violence on the innocent in Palestine.
Indians, who are in shock and unable to comprehend how this happened in the USA, need to realize that it has already happened thrice in India now.
I read on Twitter (unfortunately called, X) after the results and believe this is the only way to end what shall go down as a repeat of and an entry into a post post-truth World: The only thing Americans hate more than a rapist is a woman.
Himanshu Chakravarty Sharma / मंच 