Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude is a lovely word. Difficult to pronounce if you have a thick tongue like mine but so apt in these days of cranked up emotion.

Whether it is the Brexit discussion or the truth about Hillary, whether we are watching an advert proclaiming the latest health food or reasons the stock market is rising we are fed a diet of verisimilitude, a smidgen here, a dollop there, just enough to make the wheels go around.
We are all so gullible but then we have had decades when what a person said was taken on face value. Only the deceitful played with your trust and if you were lucky you didn't have many of them around you.

 Newspapers such as the old, pre Murdock day, Times printed on lightweight paper emblazoned with a coat of arms, was the 'word' brought down the mountain, true -un-embellished fact, you could bet your life on it. There were of course 'others' of a less distinguished nature, from a stable not known for its veracity such as the News of the World but, like purchasing gin in a brown paper bag, you were identified leaving the newsagents with a copy.

Auntie (a term describing the BBC) was so well turned out, so precise, so clear of purpose - to give the news to the nation as received from dispatches. No messing around, no tarting up, no agenda to teach.
We were so lucky. The secrets remained secrets, quite rightly they were not for our titivation - they were secrets damn it.
Today we weave our way through a plethora of, he said she said, claim and counter claim, innuendo and aspersions, queen trumps  jack. It's all so confusing but of course it's more than just confusing since it undermines the fabric of society if everyone is seen to be lying. A lier was always frowned upon. It was if communication, painfully developed to help us progress as a species, had a virus that could destroy us all. That knowledge and trust could be destroyed. That we wouldn't know how to proceeded on the quicksands of deceit and treachery if our confidence was shaken.
Today with not only state propaganda but also from  those people purporting to claim that we can place our faith in them to lead us and make important decisions for us, if they are mired in duplicity, double dealing, trickery where do we turn for leadership.
Perhaps God has a place after all but then some would say, he invented verisimilitude.