I haven’t posted for a couple of days.  (Nobody’s idea of a crisis, I know, but bear with me.)  I’m still trying to figure out where I want to go from here.

I’m still struggling with what I called the ‘Zebra Myth’ in Light Housekeeping in a Post-Truth World: the idea that there’s a referee somewhere who can decide winners and losers.  I’m questioning whether, as a society, we still have overarching standards.  If you cross certain lines, there should be real-world costs.  Sure, politics can be sloppy, but in the end, we’re mostly grownups here.

Right?

In my world, if you do something damaging, it matters.  If you’re a compulsive liar, for example, people will stop trusting you.  More importantly, you’ll have to change in some way to dig yourself out.  Most grownups don’t like being scammed.

I used to think that if we just found the clear truth, that was the end goal.  How can you argue with a photograph showing the crowd size, or that video showing exactly what a politician said?  Can you imagine someone disagreeing with, say, the theory of gravity?  It’s possible, sure, but also generally self-correcting.  Reality usually offers a bracing rebuke.

I assumed that people were rational that way.  So when I look into politics, my main hope has been to try to figure out what’s true, and what’s just a lie.  Then I more-or-less call it a day.  That’s enough, right?

That used to be enough, but not now.  Watching Kellyanne Conway wasn’t breathtaking because she would openly lie to your face, over and over.  It wasn’t that she didn’t even bother trying to hide the lies.  What was horrific was knowing she’d be invited back on the news next week.  What was wrong with us, that we’d allow that?  What line had America crossed, to pretend that all we really wanted was to be entertained again.

If the truth doesn’t matter (something Sean Spicer demonstrates daily), then what is it I’m really doing here?  The truth is critical for me, but for a wide swath, it’s secondary: the only primary principle is tribe.

So yeah, cut the (voluntary) Goldstar certification.  Costs pennies and returns dollars? Screw it!  Not our tribe!  Work to ‘de-fund’ Planned Parenthood, an organization the government doesn’t actually fund, and again, helps tons of people?  They’re not listening to reasons, so stop.  It doesn’t matter whether it works, or if it’s Christian, or if it’s caring, because none of those are the real issue.  The only real question is tribe, and tribal leaders have spoken.

Trump guts environmental rules that will kill thousands and cause immeasurable suffering.  He says that he’ll bring back big manufacturing: coal and steel and mining and heavy industries across the nation.  He knows he’s just lining the pockets of a few of his super-rich buddies, which is bad enough, but the terrible, terrible part is that the people he’s hurting mostly know that, too.  And they still won’t change.

We’re arguing logic with people who don’t care.