The “Afterward” reminds us, via George Orwell, that, like us, democracies in the past have also endured eras when long-standing principles and practices have been severely challenged. Donald Trump is the epitome of that challenge today, and his figurative presence haunted the writing of this book. Moreover, Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, in their Democracy for Realists, demonstrate that rejecting the national Story today (which they call “the folk theory”), on the basis of empirical research but without providing a replacement, is something that we might decide not to do within the guidelines of choosing, refraining, and dissembling.

This INTRODCTION shows how leaders (such as Vladimir Putin and Lyndon Johnson) often tell false stories about international affairs but lately have more and more disregarded truth (facts) in domestic policy talk while highlighting stories (like MAGA) instead. Yet truth telling is vital to democracy. Therefore, in post-truth America, political scientists should widen their disciplinary scope to pay more attention to stories than they do today. While doing so, they should (truthfully) criticize those stories within the guidelines of choosing, refraining, and dissembling (which will be explained more fully in later chapters).

Chapter 10 argues that, after choosing between Stories and refraining from undermining too many of them, scholars should, occasionally, also dissemble. The point is that if all Stories are false and some of them are worse than others, we must choose and teach Stories that are less bad than the worse. But even those alternative Stories will be false, in which case scholars should take into account that even while they are promoting what they consider to be a better Story, it will not be entirely true. Some implications of this situation appear in works by Jill Lepore, Wilfred McClay, and William James.