In the deep semantic subsoil of old German, you can locate the concepts of trust and truth nestled side by side, like small children sleeping. To be true was less to be factually accurate, than to be loyal to one’s liege, one’s vow. Today, in certain marriage ceremonies, the pair still plights troth. As the scientific method gained ascendancy during the Renaissance, truth came to connote veracity. True meant truly reported, that is, as accurately as possible. The courtroom pledge of “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” while conceptually nonsense in terms of accuracy, remains morally valid: one is expected to share one’s recollection best one can. To violate this charge is to perjure oneself, assail the community to which you have pledged allegiance, be an outlaw.

It’s useful to recall these intertwined senses as we hurtle into a post-truth age. Why did Chaucer declare truth the “highest thing that man may keep”? Absent a strong state, with its government, military, and rules, a tribe had only loyalty to one another to protect themselves from enemies and animals. Either they trusted in one another or perished. And to trust one must share what one knows as frankly as possible. Lying and collaborating don’t mix. How can you fight a foe when you fear being stabbed in the back.

Scientific disciplines acknowledge truth as a prerequisite of intellectual progress. Fresh facts are placed like bricks, and fake bricks collapse. Deceiving fellow practitioners for practical advantage is thus heresy in any fact-based discipline, punishable by eviction. In politics, during my lifetime – or more broadly, communications – truth became optional, depending on circumstances. Increasingly, ambitious operators invented their facts to suit their aim. Such inventiveness became easier as communities disintegrated and means of communication proliferated. It’s uncomfortable lying to a neighbor you must meet next week, maybe greet in church or at the village fair. It’s especially uncomfortable if you’ve lied in print or in other neighbors’ hearing. But if your lies descend from nowhere into faceless infinitudes, like raindrops into the sea, lying becomes easier, less dangerous. Was it more important to speak truth or win? To win, of course! Thus, dependable truth became naïve, even sentimental, folly. And occasional convenient truth isn’t truth at all because it cannot be relied on.

This is where we find ourselves today. We have elected a government that lies as a matter of course, without compunction, not the least blush, that crosses their hearts the truth is what they claim, knowing it isn’t. Their candor recalls the kid caught raiding the cookie jar: it wasn’t me, Joey did it, though Joey was nowhere near. We no longer trust our government, because there’s no law they will not ignore or lie they will not tell for their own advantage. Without trust, we must watch our backs, kill or be killed. A community without trust fractures into chaos. This is what the Nameless One is hoping. For only force can quell chaos. And he means to be the one wielding that force, the tyrant who tames the insurrection. So farewell, democracy, too bad, it was nice while it lasted, but good riddance. One man (yes, man) rule is the only sort that can succeed.

Only they’re not going to get away with it. For we the people, stupid as we have been, reckless with our patrimony, are not that bad. We crave community – truth, trust, decency, loyalty, grace, kindness. We want to be good. And we will vomit these villains from our midst.