2019: The Year Truth Was Lost?

In November, some of the country's most respected journalists found themselves inspecting close-up photographs of a dog’s crotch. Perhaps no single moment better captured the disorientingly surreal state of absurdity into which the country accelerated its spiral in 2019.

It started out innocently enough. Following a successful raid resulting in the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, former host of Celebrity Apprentice and current White House occupant, Donald Trump invited Conan, a dog involved in the mission to Washington for a made up medal and a photo op. Stupid? Sure. But people love war heroes and they love dogs. What could possibly go wrong?

Donald Trump, that’s what. Bloviating in his uniquely shallow stream of consciousness hyperbole, Trump told a reporter, “you’re very lucky he’s not in a bad mood today.” One problem: it had previously been reported by multiple news outlets that Conan was female. Following Trump’s statement, there was a furious kerfuffle. Department of Defense Officials first reiterated that Conan was female, before changing course less than a day later, to say that the dog was, in fact male. Conan’s trainer also emerged to claim that the dog was male, though soon pictures emerged via social media indicating otherwise. Now, nearly a month later, we still don’t definitively know Conan’s sex. 

This is 2019: the year that rendered something as simple as a dog’s gender unknowable. The year the truth was lost.

The Road to Obfuscation

It’s not like we arrived at this inflection point of epidemic obfuscation unexpectedly. Three years ago, I dubbed 2016 “the year fake news got real,” due in large part to the avalanche of lies and disinformation excreted upon the world by Trump and his presidential campaign of toxic smoke and funhouse mirrors. The lies only got more brazen when Trump took office.

Within hours of Trump’s swearing in, then press secretary and future Dancing with the Stars hoofer Sean Spicer proclaimed the inauguration “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period.” The official count from the National Park Service clearly proved contrary, as did aerial photographs showing a vast expanse of empty space. Even Spicer’s flummoxed face practically screamed, “I don’t believe a bloody word that is spewing from my Twizzler-thin lips.” Yet the White House doggedly stuck with the lie. Conservative media deftly talked around the issue, not directly affirming Trump’s claim, but muddying the waters with close up photos of densely populated sections of the grounds and statistics about TV viewership to boost the overall number of “witnesses.” 

The sheer absurdity of the entire charade led many of us not insnared in the cult of Trump to brush it aside as the administration began unleashing a flurry of more ominous assaults against democracy, diplomacy, and basic human decency. In hindsight, it was a mistake. The handling of the inauguration crowd was, in fact, a test run of the strategy that would be used to launch the full on war on truth through, which we have been enduring for the last three years, and which reached a crescendo in 2019.

Alternate Reality

Now, as we approach the end of Trump’s third year in office, his super villain worthy spree of crime, subterfuge, and general affronts to humanity is finally catching up to him. The House of Representatives has filed two articles of impeachment against Trump - Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress - and hearings are underway. The articles barely scratch of the surface of the veritable layer cake of high crimes and misdemeanors for which Trump’s elfin fingers have been caught in the cookie jar.

The problem is, as rapidly as the flood of evidence against Trump has accelerated, so have his lies. As of October, Trump had told a staggering 13,435 lies during his presidency. As a point of comparison, it’s highly doubtful Mike Pence has spoken 13,435 words this decade. Between Fox News, the alt right blogosphere, and the gaming of social media algorithms, Trump now has at his disposal an army of sycophants and opportunists eager to magnify his every utterance. As a result, a solid third of the country now lives in an alternate reality.

In their bubble, Russia didn’t interfere with the 2016 election on his behalf, it was all a frame up perpetrated by Ukraine, on behalf of the Democrats. Never mind that it was instrumental in them losing the election. His tariffs are not decimating the American agricultural sector (which saw bankruptcies increase by 24% in 2019), they are being paid by China. He did not effectively sanction the slaughter of countless Kurds with his reckless withdrawal from Syria, he struck a mighty blow for “America First.” He doesn’t compulsively slather his blubbery face in bronzer before every public appearance, it’s those new fangled energy efficient lightbulbs that make him look orange. They make all of us look orange. They also make all of our hair weaves look like wind-tussled bird nests, and our asses like half inflated air mattresses stuffed into ill-fitting golf pants. In this Bizarro universe, Trump is not a buffoon, but a prophet; not a two-bit conman, but a champion of the forgotten man. He’s not the perpetrator, but the victim, with an orchestra of 60 million odd (and I do mean odd) Americans playing the world's smallest violin just for him.

Believe Your Baby

Around the turn of the 20th Century, there was a popular song entitled “Do You Believe Your Baby or Your Eyes?” In it, a young man witnesses his girlfriend getting a little do friendly with a suitor. When confronted, she denies the episode ever happened. Incredulous, the jilted lad proclaims he saw her with his own eyes, to which she responds: “Do you believe your baby or your eyes?” He hesitates for a beat before sheepishly replying, “I believe my baby.”

As the evidence of Trump’s clandestine dalliances with Ukraine (and Russia before it) continues to pile up like wet December snow, roughly a third of the country has been primed to channel Mariah Carey when it comes to Trump: he will always be their baby. Lest they begin to waver, the entire informational ecosystem into which they have been integrated is working in lockstep to remind them to believe him over their eyes. 

With a bounty of swooning schoolboys eager to bask in every sweet nothing Trump deigns to whisper in their collective ear (or shriek at them from a podium at the center of an arena reeking of domestic beer and motor oil), the would be authoritarian and his congressional acolytes have unleashed the most patently absurd defense in modern political history.

Despite having released a partial transcript of a phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump clearly implies that $400 million in defense aid will not be released until “a favor” (the announcement of an investigation into Joe Biden) is announced, Trump insists not only that the call is not evidence of a quid pro quo (something for something), but that it is actually evidence of his innocence. “The call to the Ukrainian President was PERFECT,” Trump tweeted in November, echoing language he has used ad nauseam since the exchange became public.

Despite numerous witnesses from within his own administration testifying before congress that the aid, as well as the prospect of a highly coveted White House meeting, were clearly conditioned upon Ukraine’s announcement of the investigation, congressional Republicans remain steadfast in their insistence that there is no evidence of any abuse of power. When pressed for details, they site the lack of first hand witnesses, complaining that those who testified relied on second hand accounts. This argument conveniently ignores that the reason no eye witnesses have testified is that Trump has directed current and former administration officials like Mick Mulvaney and John Bolton not to testify, directly bolstering the Obstruction of Congress Article.

Perhaps more ominous is the black belt level game of “I know you are, but what am I?” that team Trump is shamelessly executing. Not content to simply sell the story that Trump’s 2016 electoral college victory wasn’t the product of his campaign’s coordination with Russia to interfere with the election, they are now pushing the counter narrative that it was actually Ukraine that meddled in the election to benefit the Democrats and frame Trump and Russia. The real crime, they contend, is not the Russian interference, but the FBI’s investigation of it.

Despite a recent inspector general’s report stating definitively that the “FBI had an authorized purpose when it opened Crossfire Hurricane [the investigation] to obtain information about, or protect against, a national security threat or federal crime,” Trump’s handpicked attorney general William Barr took to the airwaves, presumably between bites of Brontosaurus burger, to trumpet his opinion that the grounds for the investigation had been “very flimsy,” and tease his own upcoming review.

If Barr’s obfuscation feels familiar, it’s because we’ve seen this movie before. In advance of the public release of the Mueller report early in the year, Barr took it upon himself to disseminate a summary. Barr’s document demonstrated a peculiar definition of the word “summary,” to say the least. It’s as if, when asked to provide a synopsis for the Blu-Ray of 1984, Barr delivered a rundown of Rock IV.

Barr claimed that "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” completely omitting Mueller’s conclusion that “numerous links” had been identified between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Similarly, Barr slyly conflated the report’s failure to identify an underlying crime with exoneration of Trump on Obstruction of Justice. The Mueller report, in fact offers 10 possible instances of obstruction.

Like a pig in an above ground pool, Barr is a master at muddying the water, diluting any damning information about Trump with tangled webs of untruth. His yarns give Trump diehards a counter narrative to cling to, while sowing a dizzying brand of disinformation that could lead casual observers to tap out in exasperation and dismiss all politicians as equally crooked and dishonest.

What Now?

As we enter a new year, a new decade, and a new election that may well come to be defined by the destruction of universal truth as a fundamental concept, is there anything we can do to advance the cause of shared reality?

We can certainly start by voting Trump out of the White House, and driving him as far out of the public conscience as possible. That means pushing our favorite social media platforms to enforce their terms of service on him as stringently as they do non-famous abusers, propagandists, and gaslighters. Never one to shy away from putting the “bully” in bully pulpit, Trump has repeatedly used social media to viciously attack individuals (public figures and private citizens), encourage harassment, and re-tweet content from white supremacist groups, among numerous other TOS violations. He should be banned from Twitter like anybody else with a fraction of his rap sheet would have been years ago.

On a micro level, are the Trump cultists walking among us at work, the coffee shop, or maybe even at our own family reunion a lost cause? Not necessarily. We may simply be taking the wrong approach by trying to reach them with facts, when they exist in a space in which facts have been rendered irrelevant. 

A 2017 study by Ohio State University behavioral scientist Gleb Tsipursky noted a phenomenon known as the backfire effect. It posits that when we are faced with facts that make us feel badly about our identity, self-worth, worldview, or group belonging we tend to dig in our heels and cling to our previously held beliefs even more tightly. Tsipursky suggests emotional intelligence is the key to breaking through. “Use curiosity and subtle questioning to figure out their values and goals and how they shape their perception of self-identity,” he suggests. In short, force them to articulate why they accept the truth they do, and appeal to them based on those underlying values. 

Why, for instance, is the narrative advanced by Trump and Fox News that immigration is an imminent danger to America’s security more resonant with them than historical and empirical evidence that immigration is a driver of economic and cultural progress? Is it because they fear increased competition for increasingly scarce low skilled labor jobs in a high tech economy?

If so, perhaps they will be open to an alternate vision, under which displaced laborers are retrained for high demand 21st Century careers. Once they begin to entertain other, more optimistic philosophies, they may be less inclined to twist themselves into ideological pretzels to justify Trump’s moral repugnancy in order to retain what they perceive as his pragmatic value to them.

Or maybe they’re just racist, and Trump’s demagoguery isn’t a bug, but a feature. A sizable contingent of Trump devotees may well be a lost cause, too corroded from decades of Fox News vitriol and centuries of America’s hardcoded hatred.

But it is worth remembering that for all the tumult wrought by the 2016 election, Trump’s electoral college victory hinged on a mere handful of voters in a smattering of counties. In that context, literally every person that we welcome back into the world of objective facts could have a tangible impact on relegating Trump to a dark chapter of history, his removal representing an important first step toward the restoration of truth. Or at least collective agreement on the gender of Conan the dog.

About the Author

Jeffrey Harvey is a Washington, DC based writer and content strategist with experience in broadcasting, strategic communications, public relations, marketing and media analysis. He has written prolifically on subjects including technology, healthcare and arts and entertainment. His original one act play, Coffee won a staged reading at the Kennedy Center in the Source Theater Festival.