In the advent of the #MeToo age we constantly are bombarded with with real and supposed victims who we are told must be free to “tell their truth.”  “Telling my truth” is a decidedly foreign term to an old fart such as myself.  Forgive me, but when I grew up there was no such thing as “my truth” “your truth” of anyone else’s truth.  It was a much simpler time.  We had the truth, which was defined as a fact that had been verified, a/k/a, what really happened, and everything else, which was not the truth.  Simple really.  Nowadays it’s not that simple.  Today we must be subjected to a “truth” which is peculiar to the speaker of said “truth.”  The Urban Dictionary defines “my truth” as follows:  “Often used by academics, this is a convenient phrase for avoiding arguments because people can contradict your opinion but not your ‘truth.’  The phrase is often used when seeking to justify a controversial personal stance or action because people are not allowed to argue with ‘your truth.'”  It’s not supposed to be  THE TRUTH, but instead, something someone tries desperately to convince themselves of, in order to justify their actions and opinions. So now, the “truth” is whatever any particular person thinks is true.  To paraphrase Rene Descartes,  “Cogito Ergo Verus,”  “I think, therefore it’s true.”  According to Oxford Dictionaries, the term post-truth was first used in a 1992 essay by the late Serbian-American playwright Steve Tesich in The Nation.  Tesich writes that following the shameful truth of Watergate, more assuaging coverage of the Iran–Contra scandal  and Persian Gulf War demonstrate that “we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world.”  In 2004, Ralph Keyes used the term “post-truth era” in his book by that title.  In it, he argued that deception is becoming more prevalent in the current media driven world.  According to Keyes, lies stopped being treated as something inexcusable and started being viewed as something acceptable in certain situations. (Like politics)  Which supposedly led to the beginning of the post truth era.  American journalist Eric Alterman spoke of a “post-truth political environment” and coined the term “the post-truth presidency” in his analysis of the misleading statements made by the Bush administration after 9/11.   A defining trait of post-truth politics is that campaigners continue to repeat their talking points, even when media outlets, experts in the field in question, and others provide proof that contradicts these talking points.  Hannah Arendt, writing in 1967, presciently explained the basis for this phenomenon: “Since the liar is free to fashion his ‘facts’ to fit the profit and pleasure, or even the mere expectations, of his audience, the chances are that he will be more persuasive than the truth teller.”   The New York Times and The Washington Post  continually decry Donald Trump as “a post-truth President.  The Post paints Ronald Reagan as a noted liar, quoting his claim that, “If you tell the same story five times it becomes the truth.”  I might have chosen LBJ or Bill Clinton as better examples of noted presidential liars, but so be it.  After all, it was Bill Clinton who successfully changed the name of continual governmental lying from “lies” to “spin.”  According to the Left, Donald Trump was elected President by practicing “post-truth politics.  The relevant question, which the left-wing media chooses not to answer, is – If Trump is always lying to us, how does his supposed misconduct justify the media’s current practice of lying to the public?  In other words, if Trump is a bad actor, shouldn’t the media be the last bastion of the real truth?  If the media was really concerned with THE TRUTH, then shouldn’t it actually tell THE TRUTH?  That would require it report facts that are verified, whether favorable or unfavorable to the President.  Things like the dramatic improvement of the U.S. economy under this President, the great unemployment numbers, the increase in real incomes, the benefits of tax reform, the improvements of trade agreements, and prison reform.  A media dedicated to telling THE TRUTH would not ignore the Obama Administration’s illegal spying on a rival presidential candidate, just because his name was Trump.  Last but not least, an honest media, which did not itself practice post-truth journalism would honestly report the real and present danger presented by the humanitarian crisis on our southern border. They don’t.   It’s real, yet they deny it.  At the end of the day, the reality that politicians do and always have played fast and loose with the truth is no excuse for journalists to abandon their duty to report true facts.  Simply put, Diogenes would grow old and die toting his lantern around searching for an honest man in Washington.  The duty of the media is to shine the lantern of truth on real facts.  It must not abandon that duty to join the resistance.  Freedom of the press exists to fairly report the positions of both sides, not to take sides.