A President-elect who is a billionaire, in part due to inheriting a vast estate from his father, cast as the champion of the working class: the anti-establishment.
A Prime Minister, so wealthy his personal home is grander than the Prime Minister’s official residence, decrying “the elite”.
Two white middle-class men, both occupying positions of considerable power, with some proclivity towards sanctimony, bullying and abuse themselves, rallying against the “sanctimony, bullying and abuse” of people who disagree with them. Most of whom comprise minority groups who remain seriously under-represented in positions of power.
Seriously? At first glance it might seem implausible, laughable even. But in a “post-truth world”? It’s perfectly consistent. And, ladies and gentlemen, we are thick in “post-truth” terrain right now.
“Post-truth” relates to or denotes, circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals. And it’s been designated by Oxford Dictionaries as the 2016 international word of the year.
According to Oxford Dictionaries post-truth first came into use in 1992. Thanks to Brexit and the US election, the frequency of its usage increased by 2,000% between 2015 and 2016.
The pattern continued through the debates and the campaign – he was brazen in peddling untruths – but it mattered little.
As The Independent’s Matthew Norman put it, “The truth has become so devalued that what was once the gold standard of political debate is now a worthless currency.”
It’s a sobering and salient point. And one that was on display in last night’s interview on Sky News between Andrew Bolt and Tony Abbott particularly when they discussed Trump’s victory.
Andrew Bolt: “I’m laughing at the rage. Doesn’t the rage expose exactly what a lot of people were against? The sanctimony, the bullying, the abuse…”
Tony Abbott: “Yes, Andrew. This is, if you like, the revenge of the deplorables. All of the people who are sick of being called racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic because they don’t comply with the cannons of political correctness. All of those people saw Donald Trump as – in some way – their champion. Whether they agreed with everything he said or not, they thought he was least someone who was standing up for a measure of common sense, against the rampant political correctness that has held sway through much of the western world for too long.”
Abbott was the Prime Minister of Australia. A man who has spent his life and career in positions of privilege and power. And he can, in all sincerity, rally not for the people who suffer because of racism, sexism, homophobia or Islamophobia, but for people like him who feel stifled by the expectation not to be sexist or racist or homophobic. He can, in all sincerity, speak on a television program broadcast around the country, as if his ability to speak out is under threat. As if he and the host Andrew Bolt are at risk of being silenced or marginalised. As if they are the victims of sanctimony, bullying and abuse.
It would be a lesson in hypocrisy if we weren’t in thick of a post-truth world. In this brave new world, it’s par for course.
