The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Maybe you think it’s too early to declare the Death of Reason. Maybe you thought science and rationality would prove to be mankind’s salvation. Maybe you thought the Dark Ages were long gone and Enlightenment was here to stay. But now you must be growing, like myself, a bit uncertain about the long arc of history curving upward. There’s a certain irony in watching the internet undermine all those convictions, that techno trick of algorithmic miracles, bringing us an encyclopedic knowledge in a nano-second. We didn’t bargain for its dark twin, did we? We didn’t see that all the phony bullshit would wash over us in a tsunami of epic proportions, bots, fake news, tampered videos, photo-shopped propaganda, a tidal wave of misinformation by foreign countries, partisan politicos, greedy bloggers and cynical journalists.

The tribes are gathered around their campfires now and superstition reigns once more. There are a thousand Taliban sects, from the evangelicals to the Sunni, the Hindus to the GOP, Moslems to Prosperity Preachers, all with the truth, small T. No one needs Truth now, Truth is merely what you want to believe. Truth is what Breitbart spews, what Fox News repeats, what Rush Limbaugh quotes from both. Truth is what my old man sends me in emails, photos of Obama shaking hands with terrorists Obama’s never met, photos doctored and photo-shopped and obviously faked … unless you’re my old man and his pals who think a picture is worth a lot more than a thousand puny words.

Our leaders lie to us now with impunity. Without fear of fact-check or consequence. Without worry that history will judge them. History is right Now, it has no future relevance if facts mean nothing, if ends justify means, if the internet can warp proof into pretzel. Around the campfire we tell fables to our fellow tribesmen that create a new mythology, one that predicts the future, the Right Now. Our enemies tell the opposite stories. We can’t both be right. One religion must be the Only One. Ours.

But woe be you and woe be me, for we no longer have a religion. Banished to the jungle, we can only watch from the darkness the flickering of fires in the long endless night. The hunters will be coming at dawn.

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