One of the persistent misunderstandings in contemporary political analysis is the belief that post-truth movements are driven primarily by ignorance, misinformation, or cognitive failure. This framing is comforting because it implies a solvable problem: correct the record, educate the public, improve media literacy, and truth will reassert itself.

But this diagnosis is increasingly inadequate. What we are witnessing in the MAGA post-truth narrative is not a collapse of truth, but a redefinition of when truth is required at all. A more accurate analogy is not rumor-spreading or propaganda, but planting evidence.

Planting evidence is not an epistemic mistake. It is a moral decision.

The Logic of Planted Evidence

When a police officer plants evidence, the officer does not believe the evidence is real. They know it is false. They know it cannot withstand scrutiny. They also know that if the process were followed honestly, the desired outcome might not occur.

Yet the officer believes the suspect is guilty.

That belief becomes the moral trump card. The false evidence is justified not because it is true, but because it supports what the officer feels must already be true. The lie is reframed as a corrective—an intervention to restore justice rather than undermine it.

The core move is this: process is subordinated to outcome.

Truth becomes a tool, not a constraint.

This is precisely the logic at work in post-truth political narratives.

Knowing It’s False Is Not a Bug

A critical mistake made by critics is assuming that exposure of falsehoods will produce shame, retreat, or reconsideration. This assumes that factual accuracy remains the primary value. In post-truth movements, it does not.

Many participants are fully aware that specific claims are false, exaggerated, or unsupported. They know the courts rejected them. They know journalists disproved them. They know evidence does not exist.

This knowledge does not weaken belief—it liberates it.

If institutions are corrupt, courts are rigged, and media is controlled, then the absence of proof is no longer a problem. It becomes evidence of suppression. In this framework, the inability to prove a claim is not a failure—it is confirmation that the system is working against “the truth.”

Once this inversion occurs, lying becomes morally permissible, even necessary.

Felt Truth Versus Demonstrated Truth

At the center of post-truth thinking is the elevation of felt truth over demonstrated truth.

Felt truth does not ask, “What can I prove?”
It asks, “What do I know in my gut?”

This shift is subtle but devastating. Felt truth treats emotional resonance as epistemic authority. If a narrative feels consistent with one’s identity, grievances, or worldview, it is granted immunity from contradiction.

Evidence becomes optional.
Verification becomes suspect.
Correction becomes attack.

In this context, lying is not deception. It is testimony. One is not asserting facts but bearing witness to a deeper reality that cannot be captured by corrupted institutions.

This is exactly how evidence-planting officers describe their actions: not as fabrications, but as revelations.

The Collapse of Shared Process

Democratic societies do not rely on universal agreement about values, outcomes, or beliefs. They rely on agreement about process—how claims are tested, how disputes are resolved, how power is constrained.

Planting evidence destroys that agreement. Once officers decide outcomes justify fabrication, the justice system becomes a theater where conclusions are predetermined and procedures are ornamental.

Post-truth politics does the same to democracy.

If political actors feel entitled to lie whenever they believe themselves morally correct, then there is no longer a shared reality to negotiate within. Debate becomes impossible because facts are no longer common ground—they are weapons, selectively deployed or discarded.

At that point, truth is no longer something discovered together. It is something enforced.

Why Fact-Checking Fails

Fact-checking presumes good faith. It assumes that false claims are errors rather than instruments. In a post-truth framework, fact-checking is not rebuttal—it is confirmation of hostility.

When lies are knowingly told in service of a narrative, disproving them misses the point. The lie’s purpose is not to persuade skeptics; it is to signal loyalty, harden identity, and normalize epistemic exemption.

The persistence of obviously false claims is not evidence of stupidity. It is evidence of commitment.

Just as planted evidence signals an officer’s allegiance to a particular vision of justice over the rule of law, post-truth narratives signal allegiance to a moral conclusion over democratic process.

The Deeper Danger

The true threat of post-truth politics is not misinformation. Societies have survived misinformation before. The threat is the normalization of the belief that truth rules apply selectively.

Once that belief takes hold, there is no principled reason for restraint. If lying is acceptable when one is right, then power alone determines who gets to decide what “right” means.

History shows where this leads. Not immediately to chaos, but to rigidity. Systems where outcomes are known in advance, dissent is treated as sabotage, and process exists only to legitimize foregone conclusions.

Evidence no longer proves guilt. It performs it.

The Uncomfortable Conclusion

The most unsettling implication of the planted-evidence analogy is this: post-truth movements are not confused about truth. They are finished with it.

They have replaced truth with righteousness, evidence with conviction, and democratic uncertainty with moral certainty.

You cannot argue someone out of this position by presenting facts, because facts are no longer the currency being traded.

The real confrontation is not epistemic but ethical.

The question is no longer, “Is this true?”
It is, “Do we still believe that truth must be earned rather than imposed?”

That question—not any individual lie—is the one now before us.