Do facts have a future? The New York Times focused its business section on the question Monday, with columnist Jim Rutenberg describing “the realm of the true and how all sides would define it” as the battleground in the “hyperpartisan debate to come under a new president.” Rutenberg wondered if the news media is up to the challenge of “maintaining a fact-based national debate.”
“There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth,” wrote British novelist Doris Lessing.
Every conversation I’ve had with a Trump supporter included them telling me a story about Hillary Clinton that concluded with the assessment that she belonged behind bars (or at least in some place where she could do no more harm). What about Trump?! I’d reply. But they had no story to tell about Trump. And as there was for them no Trump narrative in which my Trump facts could be embedded, those facts weren’t worth thinking about. My imagination easily conjured up a narrative in which the election of Trump led to the end of the world, but their imaginations were otherwise engaged. No one felt a need to make a case that my facts were wrong; my facts were paltry things next to their reality—that Hillary Clinton belongs in chains on Devil’s Island.
