> post-truth era The most terrifying statement I've ever heard from the US government is this quote[1] that the NY Times[2] attributes to an unnamed aid to G.W

> post-truth era The most terrifying statement I've ever heard from the US government is this quote[1] that the NY Times[2] attributes to an unnamed aid to G.W.Bush, which was supposedly said by Karl Rove. The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." [...] "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality [...] we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." We have a serious problem if this nonsense has started to become accepted enough to justify being called a "post-truth era". May I suggest trying to get as many people as you can to read Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World"[3]? A free democracy cannot rely upon snopes (et al) as the only filter of facts from opinions and lies. Remember Sagan's warning: I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-a... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World