Since the Enlightenment, the tides in the modern West have eroded the mythology zone, a historical shift that the sociologist Max Weber called “the disenchantment of the world.” But there are always skirmishes at the borders. The brazen lies and conspiracies of Trumpian post-truth can be seen as an attempt to claim political discourse for the land of mythology rather than the land of reality. Like the plots of legends, scripture, and drama, they are a kind of theater; whether they are provably true or false is beside the point.
