“The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth, and truth be defamed as lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world – and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end – is being destroyed.”
Hannah Arendt
This morning I was watching an interview by a BBC reporter with Elon Musk The reporter was complaining to Musk about the misinformation that Musk allows on his social media platform X. Musk turned the tables and asked the interviewer about the misinformation that routinely occurs on the BBC. Suddenly, it hit me. The heavens opened. A sunbeam spotlighted me and angels sang.
We have all this massive carping about misinformation, misinformation and disinformation to the point where even Hillary Clinton worries that if we don’t do something about the social media platforms, “We are going to lose total control.”
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/10/06/hillary_clinton_if_social_media_platforms_dont_have_to_moderate_content_we_lose_total_control.html
Indeed, a whole cottage industry has sprung up of “fact checkers.”
However this is all one giant contradiction we have going on here because on the one hand we have these complaints about misinformation while on the other hand we live in a culture that touts the epistemological philosophy of postmodernism which teaches that there is no such thing as true truth. The current prevailing epistemology at the University level teaches that while sub-communities may have their little “t” truths, no macro “T” truth exists. Truth, for postmodernism is reduced to preferred narratives embraced by sundry different communities.
And yet despite that epistemology we are drowning in accusations of misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information. However if truth is reduced to merely preferred narratives that different social groups want to own then who is to say that something is misinformation? What might be true for the Lugenpresse might not be true for MAGA groupies and how dare anybody suggest otherwise.
In brief, were we rational, (and we most definitely are not) we would shut down the whole “fact checking” nonsense that is going on at every turn. What we see is that the elites want their cake and to eat it also. The elites don’t believe in true truth and yet they scream about “misinformation.”
Really, it is quite comical if you think about it.
However, what all this “fact checking” is all about is control as Hillary informed us above. Information is power and the ability to say what is and isn’t “fact” is power over people’s thinking, and so power over people. The elites don’t want anybody determining reality except for themselves. The elites want to keep selling us the false reality they have been feeding us for decades now. The access of counter information finds them trotting out the threat of misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information in order to shore up their power.
And this in spite of swearing allegiance to postmodernism at the same time.
I wish it was toothless enough to be comical. Their “truth” includes community consensus and that’s how they resolve the contradiction for themselves.
Consensus is taken very seriously and will be the phrase used in coming years to inflict terrible pain and deprivation on Christians.
They are comfortable saying to themselves, “there is no absolute truth, therefore we are free from judgement and have killed God., but consensus is so important, and loving, that it must be adhered to religously.”
By what authority … by whose authority do they determine the centrality of consensus? All they are doing here is making God out of consensus (Humanism) never mind that the consensus is frequently cooked.
14 Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
15 For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.
“By what authority do they determine their consensus?”
I can’t tell. One trend grows, another falls, but consensus remains. Oceania is the enemy sometimes (per 1984), not wearing a mask in 2021, today it’s Orange Man Bad.
I liken it to the pigs running off of the cliff in the gospels. There was no evidence given to us that the demons inhabiting the pigs were forced to do so. Fiction says Satan is cracking a whip over lesser demons, but what if they all follow of their own accord?