DDR: The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump by Michiko Kakutani

208 pages

Day 1 (DDRD 2,962) December 12, 2025 

Read to page 57.

Quoting Hannah Arendt:

"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is...people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist." (11)

I keep running into Hannah Arendt. Might be time to take that road.

And here's a banger from Tom Nichols's The Death of Expertise: "If citizens do not bother to gain basic literacy in the issues that affect their lives...they abdicate control over those issues whether they like it or not. And when voters lose control of these important decisions, they risk the hijacking of their democracy by ignorant demagogues, or the more quiet and gradual decay of their democratic institutions into authoritarian technocracy." (35)

Hmm. This--

           --rubs me the wrong way. I hate Trump and I think he is an idiot, but this kind of snide assumption is still not okay...even if I agree with it 100%. "I doubt if" would have been preferable, even though it says pretty much the same thing. Or is it Science

Kakutani essentially proposes that the idea of relativism, which was once the province of the Left / Liberal world (as a way to defend against racism, imperialism, etc.) has now become the Holy Land of the Right, where it serves to dismiss expertise, science, and truth itself.

Day 2 (DDRD 2,963) December 13, 2025 

Read to 

 150. Well...they are little pages plus I had a long wait before The Nutcracker.

From page 73:

How a Fascist State May Be Created by Democracy.

Nicholas Carr says, "We don't see the forest when we search the Web. We don't even see the trees. We see twigs and leaves." (121)

Day 3 (DDRD 2,964) December 14, 2025 

Read to page 208, The End.

"There are no easy remedies, but it's essential that citizens defy the cynicism and resignation that autocrats and power hungry politicians depend upon to subvert resistance." (171)

One thing that this book has taught me is that my exhaustion with the news media is exactly what Trump and his cronies want. As hard as it is to continue to pay attention to the news ("news"),  Kakutani seems to think it is very important to keep tuning in. And I think she's right. So once more into the breach?

And some final words from Thomas Jefferson: "I hold it therefore certain...that to open the doors of truth, and to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason, are the most effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our successors to prevent their manacling the people with their own consent." (172)

That's worth shouting, isn't it?

"I hold it therefore certain...that to open the doors of truth, and to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason, are the most effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our successors to prevent their manacling the people with their own consent." 

Amen, amen.