Commentary
When I showed my wife, who prefers gardening to politics, a photograph of a high official of the American government who had changed gender (though not sex), I’m afraid that she refused to believe that it was veridical. The ability to change or to forge images is now so great that it makes Stalin’s removal from past photographs of those, such as Trotsky or Yagoda, who had become non-persons, look amateurish and bumbling. Seeing is now disbelieving, and my wife disbelieved.
It’s the same with stories in newspapers. Reality, or some of it, has become so outlandish that, when reported, one thinks, “That cannot be true!” But, as I’m proud to have pointed out some years ago, satire is now prophecy. Think of something too ridiculous to be entertained, and it will become official policy within five years….