Editor's Note: Real

We live in an age of lies and illusions.

During the week that I wrote this note, the president of the United States publicly lamented his predecessor’s appointment of the chair of the Federal Reserve, whom the president actually appointed himself, in his prior term. The richest man in the world debuted, with much fanfare, an anime girlfriend persona for his AI chatbot—the same one that keeps spewing antisemitic propaganda. And the hot gossip of the week was a fake apology attributed to a software company CEO caught canoodling with his head of HR at a Coldplay concert.

Every day brings a new avalanche of shams and fabrications. It’s enough to make a thinking person wonder if anything at all is what it seems to be. Where do we turn for certainty? Can anyone be trusted?

Many of the stories in this issue deal with questions of authority. Who gets to say whether a person, a community, an act, or a home is real? Does authenticity come from a government decree, a piece of paper, or individual experience? These difficult questions feel especially pressing in a time when so many of the rich and powerful seem to have left reality (and decency) behind entirely. I hope you’ll find that some of these stories ring true. Then again, who am I to say?

Ben Waterhouse is Communications Director at Oregon Humanities. He supervises the organization's communications and publications efforts, including Oregon Humanities magazine, the Beyond the Margins essay series, The Detour podcast and radio show, and marketing strategy. He created the Dear Stranger letter-exchange project.

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