The De Facto Ministry of Truth

Biden has appointed a completely unserious person to head his Minitru, but that is just the window dressing - the foot soldiers are already deployed and on the march. They have been for years.

A brief word in the midst of the cacophony emanating from the totalitarians openly and actively working to stifle speech with which they disagree, banned speech is never banned, it just goes underground.

Even in the old USSR, underground publications, known as samizdat, became famous for skirting strict government censorship and spreading news, literature, and even music across countries and borders.

As Mr. Universe told Captain Mal Reynolds, “You can’t stop the signal…”

For those who wish to shut down “disinformation” or “misinformation”, the answer to that is not clamping down on media – which is an information freeway, it doesn’t have stoplights – it is to come out and explain why something is “disinformation” and make a rational, factual argument as to why it is wrong.

If you affirmatively assert the right is trafficking in Great Replacement conspiracy theories, then make the case why open borders, combined with a state funded relocation program for illegal aliens, is not going to change the demographics of America.

If you believe that every white person who commits the crime of mass murder is doing so because he watches Tucker Carlson, Fox News and reads conservative publications, then make the case why SOCs (Shooters of Color) are not being driven by the racial eliminationist rhetoric spewing forth from Joy Reid and others at MSNBC and CNN and why they aren’t positioned to kill by reading Media Matters, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

If you believe every conservative is an intellectual slave of QAnon, then explain why the same isn’t true for BlueAnon members who only listen to Keith Olbermann and Democrat operatives.

If you believe conservative policies are discriminatory and racist, please explain why affirmative action policies aren’t.

If you believe taxing unrealized gains, tell us why and how you are going to extract money from someone when those gains exist only on paper.

Stop throwing up false flags to divert the discussion.

Go ahead. Let’s debate these. Let’s address your false premises. Out in the open, in public, away from each other’s echo chambers.

Conspiracy theories (on all sides) become conspiracy fact when the believer can’t find any honest information about a particular situation or issue – as a matter of fact, using force of government to shut down any discussion of a thing will only make people even more convinced something is being hidden.

“What are they NOT telling us?” is a natural reaction of a skeptic.

And the more it is done, the more skeptical people become.

I saw a clip of Kathy Hochul, the erstwhile governor of New York, parroting every tired and cliched Biden administration talking point about how social media isn’t doing enough to shut down misinformation.

Hochul’s performance is nothing more than virtue signaling combined with a couple of classic fallacies – she is proselytizing as to what her personal High Morality would not allow, implying that anyone with another opinion and resistant to the political line is committing an offense and oh, by the way – she has the moral high ground.

Hochul offered nothing new, nothing factual or truthful that even remotely tied “disinformation” to the actions of the Buffalo shooter, whereas the most relevant information, the shooter’s 180-page manifesto is actively being hidden from the public.

Inquiring minds want to know.

Too bad intellectual curiosity is being bred out of our young.

There are entire generations who have been taught out of thinking for themselves. Socratic learning has been largely replaced with regimented indoctrination, free thinking is discouraged, and following the “system” is valued over critical thinking. Direct, vigorous debate and defending a position seem to be alien, just “sharing” opinions or presenting a list of facts is good enough. Knowledge is substituted for wisdom. It makes for an intense interest in politesse but leads to arrogant, undisciplined, unorganized thought, and in overt hostility to any challenge or correction.

Schools are now more focused on teaching what to think and not HOW to think. Objective truths and established facts are dismissed as opinion and opinion is accepted as fact.

Unfortunately for all of us, Kathy Hochul is an example of someone who believes the revolutionary truth rather than THE truth. Her view of the truth is whatever necessary to advance a political agenda – whether based on fact or not.

Most often it isn’t based on anything other than a desired outcome.

Sadly, there is nothing anyone can say to change the minds of anyone who believes they have found the revolutionary truth – not even hard truth will sway them – largely because they refuse to even consider there are other facts out there, often facts that contradict their narrative.

Several have proposed we have entered a “post-truth” phase in society. I don’t agree – “post-truth” implies that we have moved past the truth on to something else. We haven’t. We won’t. We can’t. We can ignore truth – but like matter, truth cannot be destroyed.

But we are living in the middle of a propaganda operation so vast and complete, Joseph Goebbels’ Nazi disinformation machine can’t even compare. Goebbels would be blushing right now, and it is nearly impossible for a Nazi to blush.

As a society if we cannot debate based on truth, we are in for some tough sledding.

If you are truly interested in combating disinformation, the only, and I mean THE ONLY, answer is to encourage more conversation around more information, it is not to try to command the tides not to come in.