During one of his many heated debates as a Senator from New York, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan was exasperated to the point of exhaustion. Finally, the good senator thought of a riposte to his Republican colleagues’ factually challenged harangue, which was centred around Moynihan’s alleged lack of respect for the Republicans’ “opinion” on the said issue.

“Pat” Moynihan effectively ended the debate by saying: “Sir, everyone is entitled to his ‘opinion’, but no one is entitled to his own ‘facts’.”

That was a long time ago. We now live in a world where the news media is more business than business, more propaganda than propaganda, where politicians and presidents term anyone who doesn’t agree, the entire press as “fake news’’ or biased views, where an elected American President can call entire countries ‘shithole’ while simultaneously being investigated for multiple crimes, including treason, not to mention be accused of habitual sexual harassment, blatant racism and tax fraud, and still be the most powerful man in the world.

If Moynihan was alive today, the Senator would probably have had a stroke. And Moynihan was no snowflake bleeding heart. He knew a thing or two about crooked politicians. He served President Richard ‘I am NOT a crook’ Nixon as an adviser after all.

We now have actual terms like “alternate facts” and “post-truth” that are part of our daily parlance and such made for TV catchphrases, and the terms have insidiously acquired the status of acceptable usage. It doesn’t matter what they actually are. If you hear it on TV enough times, it starts becoming acceptable in daily usage and then the journey from half-baked vitriolic propaganda material from the mind of some overzealous, self-important, factually-challenged establishment factotum to legitimate “headline material” becomes swift and painless.

Let me explain. Exhibit A.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a new “term” is coined soon…for practical and made-for-TV purposes let’s keep it simple and topical. My big prediction for 2018 is that a set of new terms (which mean absolutely nothing and have no authentic basis, I just thought of them while sipping badly-made java chip cold coffee) will be legitimised within the current fiscal year.

#newsjehad,

#position69jehad,

#desktopterrorism,

#lovebutnosexjehad,

#sexbutnolovejehad,

#OhgeeIvebeenhad

The next list will be out by the next state election cycle. So, this month.

We have Joseph Goebbels to thank for this phenomenon, of using the power of the camera, of the theatrical thread of the media to amplify a devious agenda. I don’t care how you feel about that old Nazi mass-murdering psychopathic scumbag, you’ve got to give it to his ‘’journalistic genius’’. Goebbels knew how to use the WMD that is the media much before the advent of the later Goebbel-swamys of the world. And that’s where we are now.

If Moynihan and Goebbels had a debate in the age of social media, this author has no doubt whatsoever that Goebbels-ji would use superior Aryan powers to send Daniel saab to the ends of a post-truth news cycle hell. Or Pakistan, maybe, who knows?