The truth is we prefer to lie

There are no necessary truths any more. Everything is contingent. And those contingencies are the consequence not of what happens in the real world, but of the derangement in our own minds. Some will insist it was ever thus. Well, if so, it’s never been more evident.

Take just two examples. We will never know the truth of the Kavanaugh case unless one of the two principal actors ’fesses up — and even then I wouldn’t be too sure. If the case went to court and Christine Blasey Ford were a reliable witness, and several of her contemporaries gave evidence that they witnessed the attempted rape and all Brett Kavanaugh did was mumble his repetitive idiocies, the right would still be insisting that it was a politically motivated put-up job. The jury would vote on political lines. The judge would hear the case addled by his or her own blend of confirmation bias. We would be none the wiser.

Similarly, even if Mrs Blasey Ford suddenly announced that she might have got it wrong, that maybe her memory was playing tricks and that nothing happened at all, there would still be leftist mentals shrieking that Kavanaugh Must Go and that the retraction of the allegations was a consequence of still more sexist bullying by a patriarchal state and right-wing media. If you are on the left, Blasey Ford must be believed, and therefore Kavanaugh is guilty. If you are on the right you are prepared to ignore one of the most serious allegations that can be brought against a person, and then to vilify the accuser, simply because she does not share your politics, whereas the guilty party does.

Of course if it were a liberal Democrat accused of such offences, you would be demanding his head on a plate.