TRUTHINESS--SUCH A GOOD WORD

 

I am sure that among the many legacies of Stephen Colbert, a decent amount of attention will be paid to 

TRUTHINESS,

a brilliant coinage that I take to mean something that has some of the trappings of truth, but isn't. It works perfectly to describe most utterings from politicians. For the most part, when I hear a speech or an interview, say on NPR, of an elcted official, what I hear is truthiness. 

Most politicians have learned several things about speaking to the public.

One, to say the same thing over and over, using different words, althought they often use the same words, too.

Two, not to answer question directly or at all. They just carry on saying whatever they were saying, not even alluding to the actual question.

Three, never to answer a yes-or-no question with a yes of no.

Four, most common, to blame someone else.

These characteistics also apply to official corproate spokespeople, after a disaster, like an oil spill or deaths in a mine. Particularly when said corporations are clearly at fault. The Exxon oil spill comes to mind. To hear them (Exxon) talk, the problem was in the government cleanup response. Nothing to do with lack of safeguards that every knowledgable person knew would lead to exactly this disaster. But cost cutting and profit maximization won out over considerations of safety and environmental damage.

But I digress. 

TRUTHINESS

Why am I carrying on about truthiness? Because of Trump.

You understand, truthiness is based on a resemblance to truth, a certain plausibility.

But all that was lost during Trump. There was no relation to truth, however tenuous.

There was no acknowledgment of facts, however glancing.

There was no respect for the listener, however slight. 

The Ameirican people could have no expectation of honesty, and the Trump people, it seemed, had no expectation that they would be believed. Americans gave no hint that they expected their leaders to purvey anything at all related to the truth. 

MIGHT MAKES RIGHT

is the thing, the only thing. With Trump as Commander-in-Chief, anything goes, and anything went. 

So how could the concept, not of truth, but even TRUTHINESS survive?

It couldn't. Now, with a better president, perhaps it could be revived. With it we could poke fun at the blatherers and nothing-sayers, and the hemmers and hawers, in the good-natured ways of the past.

But what to do with the previous administration's four years of utterings? I call it 

TRUMPINESS.