What is the role of actual reality in our post-fact world?
It’s a serious question, because surely at some point, it is going to rear its head and issue a serious correction to our timeline. Isn’t it?
Right now, we’ve got some of the same people who thought it perfectly reasonable to spend four years and more than $7 million on an investigation into the hollow piece of nothingness that was Benghazi arguing against investigating a CIA report that makes very real allegations of tinkering by the Russians in our most recent election.
Russians!
We’ve got career Republicans like incoming Chief of Staff Reince Priebus — as well as the president elect of the United States — trying to brush off the threat of Russian cyberwarfare, forcing a leftist media to come in and defend the integrity of the CIA, which is a little bit like Bob Woodward defending the integrity of Richard Nixon.
But that’s how far through the looking glass we’ve come. And in this post-fact era, a discernible truth only seems to matter if people believe it.
There was a time, not so long ago, when every single soul in this country would be absolutely freaked out by the news that Russian agents had manipulated our election, like the plot of some bad ’80s movie or, you know, what the CIA did in the Philippines.
But today, the truth is but one of dozens of competing narratives, one of which, posited by President-elect Donald Trump, demonstrates that Russian President Vladimir Putin is doing a “great job” and that the two will likely “get along” after Trump is sworn in.
The beauty of the post-truth is that we are free to choose which version of the story we like the best.
And yet, TCB remains in the truth business and the fact-based reality in which it lives. And the truth is that just a few days before the Electoral College is set to cast their votes for Trump, which happens on Dec. 19, we have discovered that Russians — Russians! — have interfered with our election, the extent of which we have yet to discern.
If you believe the CIA, that is.
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