What a society that fears the truth gets in terms of government

The assessment-of-the-lay-of-the-land-tpe punditry pieces are coming at us at a furious pace now. On the right, they range from let's-all-calm-down-this-nation-has-faced-much-worse takes to dire warnings of the precipice of civil war to the final trickle of reluctant conversions from #NeverTrumpism to, of course, the final bellowings of the Kool-Aid guzzlers who have been all gooey in the britches for Squirrel-Hair since July 2015. On the Left, it's mostly about pointing out what an unfit candidate S-H is, the one thing about which the Left has not been wrong.

There are the occasional do-we-yet-have-enough-perspective-to-get-a-handle-on-how-we-got-here essays.

I'd like to offer a theory about that.

Where we are is what you get when a society has come to fear the truth. Put conversely, it's the chicken that comes home to roost for a society that takes comfort in lies. To the point that it venerates falsehood.

It's a society in which a major, well-respected cultural-observation magazine gets away with publishing a completely false accusation that a fraternity at a major university was the scene of a gang rape, and said magazine, even after losing a lawsuit in the matter, responds with a lame statement about the "larger issue" behind the fact that its article was based on non-facts.

It's a society that has permitted itself to be governed by an unaccountable bureaucracy that wastes billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidization of play-like companies, and in sending its top officials to fancy international conferences at which meaningless agreements are signed, all in the name of urgently addressing something that is an utter fiction.

It is a society that has so bought into the infantile notion that gender is "fluid" that its intelligence-gathering, diplomatic and military functions waste valuable resources accommodating deeply disturbed individuals who think they are something other than what they are. A society in which a legal case about such an individual makes it all the way to the Supreme Court.

It's a society so gullible that a white woman can pass for black and become head of one city's chapter of a venerable black-civil-rights organization, and said woman, after having been found out, can find a publisher for her memoir, in which she asserts that race, as is supposedly the case about gender, is "fluid."

It is a society in which the nation's president repeatedly tells the populace bald-faced lies about the non-existent benefits of socialization of the way health care is provided and consumed.

It's a society that accepts terminology such as "man-caused disasters" and "workplace violence" that its overlords use to describe acts of jihadist war being waged against it.

It's a society that codifies into law via court precedents the notion that Christian doctrine amounts to bigotry.

It's a society in which large swaths of people kid themselves about the fact that both major-party presidential candidates, zealously touting them as vessels of noble ideals and clear vision, when it's plain to anyone willing to look at them unflinchingly, that both are spiritually hideous monsters. One side refuses to see the criminality of its candidate's handling of emails while Secretary of State and of that candidate's foundation's financial dealings. The other side refuses to give proper weight to its candidate's vulgarity, pettiness, vindictiveness, hedonism, shallowness and lack of grounding in the moral and intellectual foundations of liberty.

A society so in fear of the truth is not in a position to "begin healing" anytime soon.

Whatever happens Tuesday, sighs of relief about it "being over" are yet more proof of this phenomenon.

It will not be over by a long shot.

There is no way things are not going to get worse.