truth and power

here's what people mean when they start howling that we're in a post-truth era, reality is melting, etc. people like us (='the elites') have lost epistemic control over the peasants' minds. well they never had it, really, but they definitely believe that they should have control over what you believe. why it's a crisis now is because some of the people whose minds they've lost control of are now exercising political power. it's your little academic/bureaucratic/technocratic world, extreme in its self-love. the question of how to fix it, stop the conspiracy theories, quiet kellyanne down, etc is the same question as the question of how we can can reassert control over your beliefs and hence your behavior. well, it's going to be all 'gatekeepers': censorship, silencing of views divergent to whatever we seem to believe at the moment. 'what can we do about post-truth?' = 'how can we silence our opponents?' one of the most breathtaking things about the whole approach is that, though nothing could be more obvious than what they're doing and why, they have no idea about themselves that they are the sort of people who want to silence and disqualify people.