“I don’t know what to believe anymore.” These seven words are uttered so often these days that if given a beat and melody, they would be the hit song of the century. For many of us, the words reflect more than confusion and distrust in government. They reveal a deep seated fear that something major is changing in America, something beyond our reckoning. It’s becoming more and more difficult to think of ourselves as individuals who have a purpose in a world where Truth is irrelevant. As citizens, we are being deprived of moral agency and reduced to mere spectators.

While all that may sound ominous, there remains some hope that we, as citizens with inalienable rights, might find a way to distinguish between truth and lies, between reality and artificiality as we stumble into a future dominated by AI. But first I want to take a broad view of the political parties as they appear today.

Educated Republicans often refer to democracy as an experiment. I think this is partly due to a built-in aversion to the root word association (democrat). It’s also likely that many Republicans who have studied Western Civilization reckon that the experiment will ultimately fail. They fall in line with Machiavelli and countless pragmatists, elitists and autocrats who have regarded the common man as incapable of participating in government because he is fickle, brutish, greedy, jealous, ignorant, vengeful and basically too stupid to make good decisions. The smarter class must make decisions for them through the art of deception by altering perception. If you can make the simple man believe what you want him to believe, regardless of reality, he will vote for you. There is an intellectual cynicism at play here, where autocracy hides behind the face of democracy.

Most Democrats want the experiment to continue, of course, and to succeed. This means that, despite a bloated bureaucratic system plagued by the Peter Principle, they have avoided catastrophe. Today, the party is undergoing an identity crisis. The left wing socialist movement is an easy target for Trump-inspired Republicans, who will make them into the dangerous “Other” – alien communists who will steal your money and eat your pets! The moderate Dems face a less sensational image problem. Many of them are getting old and appear lackluster and out of touch despite their bouts of bluster. The democratic circus tent is so diverse, so speckled with mini-minorities, it confounds itself, unable to strike a unifying theme. And, while charisma is in the eyes of the beholder, there is no man or woman who shines brightly. Even if Gavin Newsom threw away his brillcream, grew out his sweet hair and parted it in the middle, nobody would mistake him for Jesus.

Then of course the Republicans have the Trump problem and his deathly approval ratings, especially among the independents who now make up half the voting population. The elephant in the room here is that, despite the growing trend of independents, we still haven’t heard from Joltin’ Joe Manchin about ’28. And what about Nikki Haley? Wouldn’t she be a viable candidate to break the glass ceiling?

So it appears Reps and Dems will have at it as usual, and the lying, mudslinging, gerrymandering and finger pointing will animate the political arena with increasing vitriol as we approach November. But there is another, more dire threat.

The corrupting agent in politics has almost always been money. Power players pervert government by reducing it to a pay-to-play business league, thereby devaluing more important leadership qualities. Today, the game has grown into something bigger than political parties. A small number of super rich individuals have at their disposal a propaganda tool of nuclear proportions. Through specialized technology, they are on the brink of controlling the information available to the public.

To control information is to control people’s thoughts. The ideas of the right to a free press, to vote, to privacy, to the presumption of innocence and all the precious guarantees of our constitution would become moot. The overlords of technology will be able to rule the planet by dictating reality.

America needs leadership that will strive to anticipate problems with Artificial Intelligence, and to better police on-line crime, especially deep fakes. If we cannot find such a leader, I’m afraid the dystopian fiction of Orwell, Bradbury, Huxley and others will become reality. The words freedom, faith, soul, love and Truth will, in essence, be removed from language, and what they stood for will remain a small aching in the heart, a void, a longing for something that once was real. All we will be able to say is “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

Pete Howard is a Dunkirk resident who teaches English Language Arts at Northern Chautauqua Catholic School and is a musician. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com