Truth, Bears, and Lantern Slides

February 2026

You and I have a problem, dear America.

You have been telling me lies for all the nearly seventy years I have been alive, telling me sweet tales of exceptionalism and opportunity, whispering that no, no, it can’t happen here.

And I, in turn, have been lying to myself for all those years, attempting to convince myself that your stories are true.

I no longer trust you, America, just as it seems you don’t trust me—for otherwise, why would you tell me those sweet stories in the firstplace? As a result, we find ourselves at what a fine talker—the title character of Herman Melville’s great American novel The Confidence Man, say—might call an epistemological crossroads.

Put another way, as many these days are saying, we’re in a “post-truth era.” But because “post-truth” is itself a post-truthful word, of a piece with its recent predecessors “truthy” and “truthiness,” let us call our time what it is: the Age of Lies.

If it is indeed this Age of Lies, then the old rules no longer apply.

And if the old rules don’t apply, we need a few new ones, or at least a few rules of thumb, to help us navigate all the post-truths that are being thrown at us. Here are a few that I’ve found to be of use, and I offer them to my fellow Americans, if not to you, my mendacious America.