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When the facets of democracy are rendered trivial

The media brims with stories of people falling from grace after they are called out for lying.

Some powerful industrialists are having second thoughts about remaining in unstable countries. The economic outlook looks grim, as leaders utter fire and fury to conceal their own sectarian divisions. When the powerful and the wealthy decide to leave, it is only a matter of time before nations descend into chaos and anarchy.

Our planet has become a theatre of political demagoguery and ineptitude as the political gladiators tenaciously cling to power at all cost. Some are compulsive liars, others are consummate actors, while some are super photogenic. The media brims with stories of people falling from grace after they are called out for lying. With no historical database of political untruth on which to rely on to make detailed comparisons, it is certain that many leaders' rate of falsehood is beyond anything ever seen in our political history. Sadly, we are living in an era where some leaders have a malignantly narcissistic penchant for twisting facts and truth in accord with their own ever-shifting sense of what serves their interests and hurts their perceived foes.

When a society loses sight of distinction between fact and fiction, truth-telling and lying, truth, critical thought and fact finding as conditions of democracy are rendered trivial.

Farouk Araie, South Africa