The Age of Unreason

“Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”

So said Thomas Paine in his seminal work “The Age of Reason” published between 1794 and 1807. Whilst the work was extensive in its scope and argument it was especially an attack on hypocrisy, particularly in religion. Paine saw in the Church, and in society generally, much hypocritical and phoney professions of belief which were often a facade hiding scepticism or denial.

There are few more repellent examples of bible bashing hypocrisy than Donald Trump and his close associates. Bishop Budde, no hypocrite she, was measured in the way she drew attention to this in the “Inaugural Prayer Service” in Washington. “ I was trying to say: The country has been entrusted to you…And one of the qualities of a leader is mercy.”

The Bishop covertly criticised Trump for his actions and planned actions against “gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, across the country who fear for their lives”. The bishop also spoke up for immigrant workers, including those who may not “have the proper documentation,” saying the vast majority of them are “not criminals” but rather “good neighbors.”

Many in the established churches and in the evangelical movements had supported Trump. Billy Graham’s son Franklin said “This is a big win for Christians, for evangelicals, We believe the president will defend religious freedom where the Democrats would not.”

The Paine charge that some profess to “believe what he does not believe” can legitimately be aimed at Trump. Many would regard most of his life, characterised by infidelity and sexual impropriety, as being indisputably unchristian. “ A man is known by the company he keeps” has been a truism for a couple of millennia, or more.

Bishop Budde cut through the hypocrisy asking Trump to have mercy or perhaps, as Shakespeare put it, to see that “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven on the place beneath. It is twice blest. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”

In The Merchant of Venice the Bard was only tangentially referring to religion. Indeed his “monarch’s sceptre” “shows the force of temporal power”. Temporal power Trump now has in abundance and before he acts against Muslims he would do well to remember that the US Constitution says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Donald Trump is an extreme example of political dishonesty and hypocrisy but let’s not kid ourselves that he’s an exception. This new “Age of Unreason” has been with us for sometime underpinned, as it is, by mendacity. Politicians have always , as Alan Clark put it, been “economical with the actualité.” In 2016 we saw this in Trump’s bigoted Presidential campaign which lied continuously, not least about his opponent. In the same Annus horribilis here in Britain the “Leave” campaign lied to us in the Referendum campaign. It’s not an exaggeration to say that nothing they said in that campaign was truthful.

The extreme “Age of Unreason” would not have been possible without Social Media . Clever operators both in the Republican Party and in the “Leave” campaign knew that Twitter and Facebook (etc.) gave them the opportunity to send personalised (as they seemed to be) messages directly to voters. This was largely uncontrolled and scarily effective and by 2024 it was down to a fine, if malignant, art.

The first US Presidential campaign which I remember was in 1960 and neither side was saintly in its conduct! That first truly modern contest was perhaps the first in which dark campaigning arts were present. In the run-up to the 1960 presidential election, John F. Kennedy claimed that the Soviet Union had more nuclear missiles than the U.S.. It wasn’t true. Similarly Richard Nixon could not tell the truth about Cuba during the campaign. There were plenty of other examples of deceit. But they were Amateurs in the art of dissembling! Their duplicities were on a tiny scale compared with the lies of Trump and, in the UK, the Conservatives in the 2024 elections. (The Democrats and Labour were way behind in the dark arts by comparison!)

In his excellent well-researched 2021 book “The Assault on Truth” the author Peter Oborne covered in detail the lies of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, described by one reviewer as “two populist demagogues on the Right.” Well Johnson got his comeuppance being forced out in 2022 in no small part because he was a congenital liar. And Trump? We know what’s happened to him!

A major characteristic of the “Age of Unreason” is the lack of effective checks and balances on power. We can profess to believe what we do not believe almost without challenge. And even if untruths are revealed as such rebuttals will be believed by the faithful even if they are patently untrue.

As a journalist says in John Ford’s classic movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Both Johnson and Trump had many around them who would print or tweet the legend. And too many of we schmucks believed it !