Post truth, post fact world

As I write this, Trump has been sworn in as US President, and the White House website has been deleted of any reference to LGBT or climate change. A house of fools.

I have not mentioned the US election in my blogs. In all honesty it has been too depressing, but with the Brexit thing over here, it seemed so far away, and nothing we over here could do about it.

In fact, both the Referendum and the US election were the results of post-fact, post truth, mis-speaking, bare faced lies whoch for the most part were not unchallenged by most of the media. Those that did were accused themselves of spreading fake news. Quite how people will be able to make an informed choice in the futures as more and more fake news will flood both the real and social media. As Churchill said, lies will be halfway round the world before the truth is out. By then it is too late, people only too happy to believe the worst, that a paedophile ring was being run from the basement of a pizza restaurant. That it was a made up story and the building had no basement made no different, people still believe in pizzgate now.

Our only hope is that it won't be as bad as feared. And when I mean our, I mean humanity. But he has the apparent support of both houses, dies not trust the US's own security services, threatens to screw up old alliances, destroy NATO, cancel trade deals.

At home, it is worse, the poor, the non-white, LGBT will suffer, those looking for abortions, Muslims. All will fear for what the future holds. And rightly so. A man with ultimate power and nothing to hold him back, a man apparently beholden to the Russian President.

It is a dark day, and I have no words.

So here is Mr Murrow:

We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep into our own history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthty's methods to keep silent. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result.