In our culture, faked seems as good as fact

The widening reach of the forged letters scandal continues to surprise.

One thing that does not surprise, however (and unfortunately) is the fact that such a thing could have happened.

We live in a near-Orwellian culture today where truth is whatever you believe it to be, and the ends justify the means. Old-fashioned ethical concepts such as integrity and honesty have lost respect.

Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Ivy, received a total of eight letters falsely claiming that four local groups — the Albemarle-Charlottesville chapter of the NAACP, the Jefferson Area Board for Aging, a local chapter of the American Association of University Women and Creciendo Juntos — opposed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, also known as the cap-and-trade bill. Two other House members also received forged letters.

The letters came from Washington lobbying firm Bonner & Associates, which was working for the Hawthorn Group, which was working for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

After The Daily Progress reported the first wave of the scandal, Bonner & Associates said that the letters originated from a temporary worker whose deception had been uncovered by the company’s internal checks-and-balances and who subsequently had been fired.

Now has come word that although the deception was discovered in time, lawmakers were not notified before the vote on cap-and-trade.

Assuming that Bonner did not sanction the writing of faked letters, still one wonders: How could such a thing have happened?

It could have happened because our culture has lost consensus about the im-portance of truth. Not subjective truth, not relative truth, not my-truth-is-as-good-as-your-truth. But plain, old-fashioned, honorable, fact-as-reality truth.

It sounds quaint to say so, but we recall when social scientists and ethicists questioned new trends such as “infotainment” and “docudramas,” blending fact with fiction and leaving consumers unsure about which was which.

Today we have a kaleidoscope of blogs and Web sites purporting to offer the “real” truth but doing little more than promoting opinion. These sites, however, are trusted by many.

Students — even at our most prestigious schools — either don’t know what plagiarism is or don’t care, buying term papers off the Internet and submitting them as their own work.

Governments keep secrets from the public, warping the truth by withholding pertinent facts, and political partisans actively spread misinformation about the opposition.

These are just a few examples from current culture. So it is not surprising that a lowly temp worker — if indeed that is what happened — might have seen little wrong in forging letters. Appalling, but not surprising.

As for why Bonner & Associates didn’t notify those lawmakers of the deception?

Perhaps it was just an oversight.

However, another hallmark of today’s culture is often a reluctance to take responsibility. But, then, that’s another editorial.