“What is true, and what isn’t? That question is beginning to lose its relevance in American politics For some years now, Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge and other members of the conservative infotainment complex have relentlessly poured scorn on everything reported by the “mainstream media”, and thereby successfully “wrecked the idea of objective, knowable fact”. Even the Wisconsin radio host Charlie Sykes, a conservative activist, has recently admitted that things have gone too far, an admission prompted by his frustration over the campaign tactics of Donald Trump”.

As Sykes points out, when Trump says something that’s blatantly racist or untrue, Sykes’s radio audience don’t expect him to retract it: no, they expect him to defend it, and if he doesn’t, brand him a sell-out. “We’ve created this monster,” as Sykes puts it. “We’ve basically eliminated any of the referees, the gatekeepers.” In the alternative reality of today’s conservative orthodoxy, science, polls, history and major media institutions have no credibility. Climate change is a hoax. President Obama was born in Kenya. If Trump loses, the election was rigged. Liberals and conservatives can no longer communicate across the ideological divide, or cooperate to solve problems, since they can’t agree on any objective set of facts. “The damage from that is profound, and will not be easily fixed.” (Leonard Pitts Jr, Miami Herald)

Is this the end of the United States as a governable, modern member of the interntional community? I have wondered (to myself up till now), whether the country should have been broken into two and whether the instincts that drove the Civil War were not, in the longer term, more pragmatic. But the problem there is that is is not a simple matter of North versus South. Much of the mid-West is very conservative. A Left-Right division of States into two new countries, even if were conceivable, would leave an East-West divide, with liberal California and maybe other Western States separated from the Liberal North East.

Perhaps only an immigrant such as I would even imagine such a scenario. But if division is not an option, what is the future of the Union and how do you undo the damage done by the radical extremists. Republican speaks not to Democrat, and vice-versa. You can’t have a workable country like that. Epicurus, were he alive, might advocate putting all the extreme politicians and talk show hosts out of business in one huge revolution, re- writing “freedom of speech”, all in the name of commity, peace of mind and civilised discourse. But then you have the 300 million guns…..