PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

One important reality has struck me as all of us, as voters, are enduring one of the most contentious presidential campaigns in history.

It is this: We are living in what Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts calls “a post-factual society.”

Facts don’t seem to matter. It is, rather, what you happen to believe and, if a falsehood is uttered repeatedly, it becomes a new fact.

The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson put it more directly in the aftermath of the debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. He said Trump “inhabits his own factual universe.”

More from Gerson:

“It is not surprising that Trump inhabits his own factual universe, in which truth is determined by usefulness and lies become credible through repetition. What made the first presidential debate extraordinary — really, unprecedented — was not the charges that Trump denied, but the ones he confirmed.

“When Hillary Clinton claimed he didn’t pay any federal income taxes in a couple of years, Trump said: “That makes me smart.” When Clinton accused Trump of defrauding a contractor out of money he was owed, Trump responded: “Maybe he didn’t do a good job and I was unsatisfied with his work.” When Clinton criticized Trump for casual misogyny and for calling women “pigs,” Trump brought up Rosie O’Donnell and said, “She deserves it.” When Clinton recalled a Justice Department lawsuit against Trump alleging housing discrimination, he dismissed it as “just one of those things.”

“When Clinton attacked Trump for coddling the Russians, Trump attempted to excuse them of hacking, shifting the blame toward obese computer geeks. When Clinton accused Trump of betraying U.S. allies, Trump answered: “We defend Japan, we defend Germany, we defend South Korea, we defend Saudi Arabia, we defend countries. They do not pay us. But they should be paying us. . . . We cannot protect countries all over the world, where they’re not paying us what we need.” Rather than affirming the importance of NATO, or reassuring our Pacific partners — the easy and expected answer — Trump reduced the United States’ global role to a protection racket, run by a seedy executive who admits to cheating contractors when he is “unsatisfied with [their] work.”

“During the debate, the points scored against Trump were damaging. But the points he ceded would disqualify any normal politician, in any normal presidential year.”

In this strange political year, one more trend seems to be clear. It is that many voters assess the environment differently than political commentators or the so-called “political elite” (which, I guess, includes me, given my long career as a lobbyist).

When it comes to Trump, seeing him in a positive light is incredible given what he has said about women, about minorities, about the disabled, about the parents of a slain U.S. solder. He is so self-absorbed as to be comical. Nearly everyone response to every question resolves around “I did this” or “I did that.” Nary a word about those who be affected by his buffoonery.

I cannot him with his finger on the nuclear trigger. As the Arizona Republic wrote the other day in its first endorsement of a Democrat in 126 years, “the president commands our nuclear arsenal. Trump can’t command his own rhetoric.”

Normally, such over-the-top statements as Trump has made would disqualify someone from running for president.

But facts don’t matter. Trump supporters don’t seem to care about what he has said and done, or appear to believe that facts about his lack of character have been planted by the anti-Trump media elites.

But, if facts matter – and they do – the choice is between two evils. If I have to make it, my choice will be Clinton, more a vote of resignation than enthusiasm…and one based on facts.