There’s a popular trend on the Internet these days of identifying moments when television has somehow managed to predict the future. The writers of “The Simpsons,” in particular, seem to have been gazing into a crystal ball for decades. As the partisan divide in the U.S. grows deeper, however, there’s a quote from “Seinfeld” character George Costanza that grows more prescient with each passing day.
In the 16th episode of the show’s sixth season, George offers Jerry Seinfeld the following advice regarding how to beat a polygraph test: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.” As funny as that line was and is, it serves as a reasonably accurate assessment of the current political climate. And unfortunately, it permeates far beyond Internet commenters or even voters.
In the wake of President Trump’s nomination of D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court vacancy opened up by Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, reporters from NBC News were tweeting that the retiring justice had been in negotiations “for months” with Trump and the White House about his successor and that once he received an assurance that it would be Kavanaugh, “…Kennedy felt comfortable retiring.”
Shortly thereafter, the claim in that tweet was reduced to an admission that the information within it came from a single source, and it could not be confirmed that Trump had even spoken with Kennedy about a possible replacement. Although a clarification later suggested that Kennedy merely provided the president and the White House with an acceptable list of replacements, that didn’t stop the initial story from amassing tens of thousands of retweets or being cited by prominent journalists.
This comes on the heels of the rebutted but widely shared story about a connection between Justice Kennedy, his son, and Trump, and a deal between them dating back to before Trump announced his bid for president.
The president himself, as well as his supporters, are also not innocent in this regard. Trump has repeatedly parroted the wholly unverified claim that millions of unregistered voters cost him the popular vote in the 2016 election, for instance, a statement that nearly half of Republicans said they believed as recently as this past May.
All of this represents a perfect, if unsettling, distillation of the current political climate. Real political engagement is now an extension of the battle lines drawn on Twitter, where every day is an ongoing struggle between those on the right that want to “own the libs” and those on the left that are committed to “resisting.”
In a post-truth political environment, when winning at any and all costs is the only thing that matters, political discourse can easily devolve into tribal shouting matches defined by the aforementioned Seinfeld quote or its modern, less declarative analog: “big, if true.”
Democracy may well die in darkness, but until that time comes, opinions masquerading as facts seem to live in it.
Tamer Abouras (@tamer_abouras) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a writer and editor from Williamstown, N.J.
