53 Weeks Ago and Nothing Much Has Changed

Power Defines Truth and Dissent is a Lie
May 21, 2020

From World War II through the start of the Digital Age early this century, a privileged narrative prevailed as “reported” by the three broadcast networks, a few national magazines like Time and the two nationally distributed newspapers, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. You could not encounter any advocacy of communism, fascism, atheism, anarchism or any other variety of institutional dissent without the context clearly identifying such ideas as evil, foolish or both. You had to go to a library or a dusty old book store to look for information about disapproved ideas, and it did not even occur to anybody that there was anything odd about this regime. It was Normal.

During those decades, the distinction between “fact” and “opinion” was irrelevant. Communism was the big problem, and our privileged narrative held that its main tool was lying – later rhetorically inflated to “disinformation.” To counter communist lies, we established Radio Free Europe, beaming the Truth to the victims of Soviet aggression. I will never forget a conversation I had with my girlfriend's Army Colonel father in 1969. He said, "What bothers me is these Reds, going around telling people they aren't happy. People are happy."

Those were the days.

The Internet subverted the power of that group of a dozen or so national news organizations to define the truth. Marshall McLuhan foresaw this – he must have been a space alien. Before the internet, it took a major capital investment to communicate with the mass of the population – paper mills, printing presses, delivery trucks, a national network of broadcast antennas, a roster of reporters deployed around the globe. The “entry cost” to communicate with millions of people was always in the millions of dollars – back when a million bucks was a lot of money. Thus the Privileged Narrative was provided by people or organizations with Big Money.

Today, a few hundred dollars will hook you up with several billion people. It takes some pizzazz and a lot of luck for your humble contribution to go viral – but as lots of cat video fans will tell you, it happens. Nobody has control over what goes viral, with both memes and “facts” now spreading instantly around the world, obliterating the once unchallengeable power of the TV networks and the nationally circulated print organs.

Without anyone in power to filter out disapproved information, we are now in a state of Information Anarchy. Exacerbating this chaotic situation is the apparent war of dueling realities between the Democrats and Republicans here in the USA. While having no trouble authorizing money to keep our wars against the whole world going by almost unanimous votes in Congress, they angrily insist that the other party’s leaders belong in jail.

This bizarre stalemate of dueling accusations of fundamental illegitimacy by the highest public officials in the nation has completely obliterated any hope for the quaint notion of “objectivity.” Facts are supposedly stubborn things, so if you want to win your argument, make sure that you never have to face one. Nope, just call it Fake News.

Which brings us to the Life and Death Fake News Battles going on today. I am a newcomer to this board, and the most striking thing I have seen so far is that this crisis of legitimacy and epistemology is playing out here, too. One thread links to an article that condemns “pro-Trump” doctors for lending their medical licenses to the effort to slaughter Americans because Trump’s election somehow depends upon it.

The implication is undeniable. If a doctor is “pro-Trump” he or she is by definition a liar and an accomplice to mass murder. The “truth” is that there is only one correct way to fight the virus, and there can be no disagreement with that. Dissent is by definition a lie.

This is in line with the various internet articles and viral memes that chortle with glee at the imminent deaths of Trump Supporting Lockdown Protesters. It also ignores the “novel” nature of this virus which, by definition, has unknown and unpredictable effects, pre-emptively disqualifying any medical opinion that varies from the conclusions coming from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The virus has become Russiagate Part Trois – a rallying cry for hatred of Trump without any practical point to it other than Trump sucks.

Well, he does suck. And his ridiculous Presidency is a travesty. Nevertheless, just because some medical doctor voted for him, it does not follow that the doctor really wants to kill human beings just to help Donnie Shrimpfingers stay in the White House. Nor does it render the Pro-Trump doc a quack.

Certitude about how The Lockdown Is Good is insane. I am going along with it, and I accept the notion that it is better to be too cautious than not cautious enough. But to condemn anybody who disagrees or even just questions it as indifferent to human death is totalitarianism in action.

And it makes me wonder where that little internet meme came from . . . .

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This week, the topic of epistemology has been discussed rather intensely on this board. Many people are outraged about the painfully obvious reality now that "reality" is no longer simply "the facts."

I understand the hunger for a solid base of "reality" upon which we can discuss our public policy options from a shared set of understandings about life, people, events and power. Sorry about that. There is no answer to this "reality" -- everything you know about the world beyond your five senses is what somebody told you. Wishing that this process could produce an accurate picture of "reality" is futile.

In prior centuries people slaughtered each other over who gets to speak for God (or the gods). Now we are probably on the verge of slaughtering each other over who gets to speak for science.

Just like when a child first wraps their young mind around the idea of "death," it is pretty much a freakout to realize that we are all at the mercy of liars who have plenty of good reasons to want to pull the wool down over our eyes.

And no, there is no way to say, "Yes, but there really is objective reality, dammit!" without tripping over your own contradictions. There may or may not be a static "reality" at any given instant of time, but it won't hold still and the only way you can "know" what that reality is that somebody told it to you.

And they can lie.

Yes, but . . . .

Sorry. This has been discussed by the philosophers for thousands of years and nobody has yet successfully resolved it. Not even the certitudinous folks on the internet who scoff at the impossibility of knowing THE truth.

They hate facing that idea so much that some of them want to ban it. Good luck with that folks.

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I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

...if one really believes "there is no truth/everything is subjective" (100% fucking stupid, but nevermind that for now), you'd think that would AT LEAST have the silver lining of putting the complete and utter kibosh on moralism, dogmatism, "political correctness", and zealotry of any kind, for any reason. Without truth, "justice" is literally meaningless, so why bother claiming to fight for it, much less use it as a pretext for becoming some kind of career neo-Visigoth???

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Shahryar's picture

I don't see any context.

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janis b's picture

and naturally wonder if my perspective may be naive.

Because New Zealand locked down hard from the very beginning, we have had very little community transmission. We have lived relatively normally for over a year. Lockdown on an island of only 5 million, near the bottom of the earth helped prevent the virus from spreading.

By nature, I am someone who has pretty much always put my trust in the fact that humans have survived because we have developed immunity through exposure, benefiting ultimately from the strength it produces. I also realise that the state of humanity and the earth has been growing weaker and more compromised. I wonder and question how we put these new normals in perspective. I have always appreciated the privilege time has afforded, and now the position I am in (because of where I live) to make a decision about the efficacy of the vaccine. But I still have many questions, and am not in one camp or another.

You seem quite convinced in your position. I hope you and all of us can remain open to examining the subject while respecting our differing at times, and always questioning natures.

I'm not yet convinced of this ... "Wishing that this process could produce an accurate picture of "reality" is futile." I think there's always room for new understanding.

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It seems to be adequate enough to find ways to stay alive for long enough to procreate and continue the process. But it is clearly not enough to see behind the curtain that keeps us from the certainty of knowing our larger purpose. For the credulous answers are readily available and life simply proceeds. For those that live with questions that have no answers, life will be more difficult and more problematic.

Perhaps it is possible to develop the ability to know with an absolute certainty, but I suspect that this would require the ability to perceive in ways as yet unknown, far beyond the reach of our five senses.

I do not begrudge the purveyors of the narratives we read in the papers. They deal in answers for the credulous, those who are not disposed to remain on the uncomfortable edge of questions without answers. The Truth, if it is to be found at all, is for each of us to seek out. Even those who earnestly seek it may die without finding a single example.

It is unclear to me if it is a curse or a blessing to ask the question “Why?”.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes