The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump

by Michiko Kakutani

Outrage gives way to outrage fatigue, which gives way to the sort of cynicism and weariness that empowers those disseminating the lies. As the former world chess champion and Russian pro-democracy leader Garry Kasparov tweeted in December 2016, “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”

The trickle-down legacy of postmodernism, Wallace argued, was “sarcasm, cynicism, a manic ennui, suspicion of all authority, suspicion of all constraints on conduct, and a terrible penchant for ironic diagnosis of unpleasantness instead of an ambition not just to diagnose and ridicule but to redeem. You’ve got to understand that this stuff has permeated the culture. It’s become our language”—“Postmodern irony’s become our environment.” The water in which we swim.