Post-truth is not about reality; it is about the way that humans react to reality. Once we are aware of our cognitive biases, we are in a better position to subvert them.

Arendt once observed that “the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction … true and false … no longer exist.”

Fake news is not simply news that is false; it is deliberately false.27 It has been created for a purpose. At the beginning of the 2016 election season, perhaps that purpose was “clickbait.”

As presented in current debate, the word “post-truth” is irreducibly normative. It is an expression of concern by those who care about the concept of truth and feel that it is under attack. But what about those who feel that they are merely trying to tell the “other side of the story” on controversial topics? That there really is a case to be made

Yet the real problem here, I claim, is not merely the content of any particular (outrageous) belief, but the overarching idea that—depending on what one wants to be true—some facts matter more than others. It is not simply that climate-change deniers don’t believe in facts, it’s that they only want to accept those facts that justify their ideology.

But the tricky part is not to explain ignorance, lying, cynicism, indifference, political spin, or even delusion. We have lived with these for centuries. Rather, what seems new in the post-truth era is a challenge not just to the idea of knowing reality but to the existence of reality itself.

that you are right, but to demonstrate that you have authority over the truth itself. When a political leader is really powerful, he or she can defy reality.

Who needs censorship when the truth can be buried under a pile of bullshit? And isn’t this precisely what the issue of post-truth is all about: That truth does not matter as much as feelings? That we can’t even tell anymore what is true and what is not?

Think of this as the first thesis of postmodernism: there is no such thing as objective truth.