Costuming for the Post-truth Century.

Glenn Beck, who has been known to dress himself up, has admonished the Tea-partiers for wearing colonial costumes, and in this way, subverting the seriousness of their message.  Surprisingly, I disagree with GB.  It seems to me that if we have to deal with a “subjective truth,” we may as well be up-front about out assumptions, and costuming the “Post-truth” era may be a useful way of going about it.

For example, if you are going to claim something is true because it sounds like it should be true, you must dress like a Michael Jackson and sing it.  If it is true because you wish it were true, you can only tell the world about it if you dress like Dwayne Johnson in “The Tooth Fairy.”  If it is true because it should be true in a fair and just (most perfect of all) worlds, you must dress like a syphilitic Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide.  If it is true because a scientific poll showed it to be true—as in 72% of American believe vaccination against polio is harmful, therefore…, you must dress as Boris Karloff as the mad scientist in “The Man They Could Not Hang.”  True because you are loyal to a fault and “fill in a name” said it’s true. You must dress as Lassie and bark it.

We could expand on this general theme, of course.  Do you and your friends want to spend time and money repealing something you know won’t be repealed?  You should dress as the cast of “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”

See if you can match up a subjective truth for: Harry Reid dressed as John Wayne; Barack Obama as Lebron James; Sarah Palin as White Fang; and, Michele Bachmann as Michele Bachmann. Just make stuff up.  Everyone else does.