When False Belief Bumps Into Reality

Washington 2021

 The pandemic under which we are all currently living has brought the nation to its knees and caused suffering and distress quite unimaginable just a few months ago. It is unlikely to get significantly better any time soon. Having said that I am increasingly of a mind to suggest that there is another aspect of our national life that in the long run might have even more disastrous and distressing consequences.

In the past five years in this country we have seen a rapid and insidious growth in lying by those in power. We have a Prime Minister who casually and unashamedly lies to both Parliament and the electorate. He is ably assisted in this by other senior

Priti Patel Brexiteer and government minister
promising what cannot be delivered to the NHS

Tory politicians. The Brexit campaign was based upon and ultimately won on a strategy of lying - most obviously in the lie emblazoned across the Brexit bus promising £350 million pounds each week for the NHS once we left Europe. The lying continues, like Pinocchio's nose it grows and grows - so that now every other aspect of our political life is tainted by the the knowledge that we are almost certainly not being told the truth by those in power. "Fake news" - a euphemism for lying - has become the buzz phrase of our times and the most worrying and appalling aspect of the whole charade is that no-one seems to care; Joe Public now casually accepts that this is reality and we should just accept the fact. It's just what politicians do. And Joe Public now takes it further - rather than being appalled too often he jumps on the bandwagon and repeats lie, spreads the fake news even when it is manifestly an untruth. In short we have lost our moral compass.

Trump - a man who spreads lies
quite unlike anyone else on Earth

We are not, of course, alone. Across the Atlantic the once great USA is politically on its knees following the 4 year presidency of Trump and his henchmen. We should watch America and learn. When governments become tainted and corrupt because they lack integrity and when the electorate refuse to acknowledge the obvious - that truth and integrity matter - then things can get nasty very quickly. It is the starting point for unrest and insurrection - a condition that ultimately, and unlike Covid, there is no quick fix vaccine for. It is very easy for nations to slip into civil unrest and civil war - one only needs to look at other nations around the world throughout history and in our own times to see the truth of this.

Seventy years ago - at a time when integrity actually meant something in the political and social life of the nation writer George Orwell eloquently reminded us of this in his essay "In Front of Your Nose". He didn't use the phrase "fake news" and his main point was that people are often in denial about what constitutes truth and how we react to it. This is what he said:

"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue. And then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite period of time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

The arch villain Dominic Cummings
a man who gleefully spreads deceit and
misrepresentation to further his own ambitions 

Orwell, as usual, was not wrong - the truth of his statement is to be seen on the "battlefield" streets of Washington and other US cities where "false belief" has indeed bumped up against "solid reality". It is a scene that can very easily (and I suspect will) come to this nation sooner or later unless we bring back to our political and social life some semblance of integrity and truth.

Boris Johnson - a serial liar -  a man who has
 built his whole career on lies and is probably
 unaware of when he is lying so deeply is it
ingrained into his psyche

The solution is not easy nor is it quick. To do this every single member of the electorate must win the first battle - the battle of the ballot box - by voting for those with integrity and commitment to the common good rather than the quick fix, glib solutions of snake oil salesmen like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. They must then win the second battle - by being well informed, taking a pride in their civic responsibilities, and holding to account those that they have voted for. It is only in this way that the political pandemic of deceit, fake news and lack of moral compass which is sweeping the world and is at its most prevalent in the USA and the UK can be overcome.