Federalist
In a preliminary injunction issued against the White House and federal agencies on Tuesday in Missouri v. Biden, Judge Terry Doughty eviscerated government actors for colluding with social media companies to censor users’ protected speech in the name of eliminating “misinformation.”
Doughty, as others have done, compares the government censorship to Orwell’s hypothetical “Ministry of Truth.” But Orwell’s satirical title gives the speech police too much credit: It assumes “truth” is still a functional part of their vocabulary. No, our censors speak in terms of “misinformation.”
The perversion of truth is falsehood; misinformation is just the perversion of information. Truth has a moral component; information doesn’t. Years of moral relativism have eroded our cultural understanding of “truth” as a knowable, agreed-upon concept — and in our modern world, all we’re left with is an infinite supply of information. More
America’s greatest enemy is our government.
And the media.
@ Dr. Hambone AT 12:53 PM
Nope. It’s The Party. Government and the Deep State, Big Tech, the Media, Academia, Big Pharma, are all in. In their eyes it’s them against us and it’s high time everyone they have been targeting figure that out. They have nothing but contempt for us, including those who they have co opted to do their bidding for them.
JDHasty: But without government license, none of the others could do a thing. Yes, those other agencies pay off those in the government, but if they ran afoul of the government the government could cut them off at the knees.
Dr. Hambone AT 12:53 PM
“America’s greatest enemy is our government.
Bob AT 12:59 PM
And the media.”
…same thing.
JD, that is a pretty good definition of Fascism.
Let’s briefly examine our judicial system, which is terrible but the only thing worse is everything else. We have an adversary system: A argues for his case while B argues for her case. Some where in there is the truth – either A is telling the truth, or B is telling the truth, or the truth is some of A’s story and some of B’s story or maybe none of it is true. But the trier of fact (i.e. the judge or the jury) will have two parties each arguing his or her case, and out of that the truth usually comes out. Surprisingly, this system generally works.
Now let’s look at “misinformation” in the context of social media. Misinformation is not necessarily falsehood, it could be the truth except the truth may not be socially convenient. For example, we know that masking for Covid is not really effective, but people who are in favor of mandatory masking deem this to be “misinformation” because masking may prevent a very small percentage of viruses from being transmitted and make people feel better about the situation. In this scenario, the government (I am using the government and social media as one and the same) deems anti-masking as misinformation, although the alleged misinformation is largely true but not in conformity with government policy. Also, facts regarding masking are used to scare people, which is why you see folks driving by themselves fully masked although this is completely useless and likely harmful.
In censoring social media and eliminating vigorous debate and facts contrary to the government stance, the government is eliminating information under the guise that the arguments and assertions are misinformation, but which may actually contain substantial truth. On the other hand, if censorship of “misinformation” is not practiced, it is more likely that if there is substantial and vigorous debate, the actual truth will come out.
Full and vigorous debate is not perfect, but then again nothing is. There are a lot of crack pots out there – for example, someone may claim that the Covid vaccines will turn people into lizards – but these factual assertions can usually be easily debunked. But the government’s concept of “misinformation” is frequently misinformation in and of itself, and has more potential to do harm than non-censorship.
In Orwell’s world the authorities at least pretended at the truth. Our overlords don’t even give us the courtesy. They simple give themselves the powers to deem what is true (which is likely lies) and what is not true enough. Anything that disturbs the received narrative is attacked gradually at the edges (discrediting source or process) or subjected to the full force of media, entertainment and/or academia (all of which have long ago been bought and paid for).
The media and social platforms conspired with the Democrat Party to censor any mention of Humper’s laptop in the public forum, claiming it was Russian disinformation. They did this right before a presidential election. Heads should roll. Or maybe stuck on pikes.
She needs to read the very depressing book! George wrote it soon after Attlee defeated the protagonist
Winston. Orwell felt the UK’s “Bush Republicans” had taken over and there was no hope. Winny capitulates IN THE BOOK! Many Reagan men feel UNIpARTY’s Truth Ministry will lose; in the book it won!
The real Winnie came back to defeat the UK’s Bush 10/51!
She also need to study The Dark Ages. “The Truth” then was: the Sun revolved around earth; earth was flat, sail to the edge and fall off, …. many were burned at the stake for d”denying the truth”!
TRUTH has always “Been in the mind of the believer”; RELATIVE, not concrete!
eg
To GWB I’m a bad man because I believe America is a good country. GWB’s “Truth” is America is bad!
Paraphrasing Newton of 500 years ago, “Its all relative!”!