The misinformation that is true

Or, the death of "opinion" as a thing that exists

As educated and intelligent folk, I am sure you are all fans of the 1990s science fiction series Babylon 5. One thing I like about that show is that the bad guys, the ones internal to the Earth Government anyway, are slick, and deceptive, and always talk like they’re just out trying to help people. They don’t wear large hats that say “I’m a bad guy”, and they play exactly the sort of games with words our own political bad guys play.

At one point early in the show, the “Ministry of Peace” creates an agency called “Nightwatch” which, as the show progresses, functions as a sort of political spy and police force for the state, reporting on people who protest the current Earth government, shutting down their businesses, and so on. At one early meeting, where they’re playing nice and trying suck people in, they say they’re just trying to protect the public from threats like disinformation (you know, like the idea that the Hunter Biden laptop is real) from alien governments (you know, like Russia). That’s 1990s TV but… always the same old games, same old games.

(We could learn the lessons of history by reading and study. Instead we seem determined to relearn them by experience.)

Language games and immigration

With that intro, I had the thought a few days ago that words like “refugee” and “asylum seeker” used to mean something very serious. These were people fleeing a famine, or a civil war, or gangs or the government (but I repeat myself) were hunting their family and they needed a new place to live. Now, I’m told our country is flooded with “newcomers” to whom those words are regularly applied, and near as I can tell, for many of them, they are not fleeing such dire conditions. They just think life would be better in this country than in the country they came from. I’m certainly not opposed to someone having that belief and acting upon it. And I’m even libertarian enough that I’m open to discussing the idea that borders should be completely open and free to travel. But I am not favor of making that the reality by abusing language, without ever having the discussion.

(Nor, by the way, are elected Democrats in favor of open borders¹. They are in favor of solidifying their own power. If they thought the folks coming across the border were going to make the country more Republican, they would have troops stationed every five feet, and the media would be writing articles about how the government was keeping us safe from terrorism and human trafficking and such.)

You see this language game a lot - start with words that have large public buy-in, and incrementally change the definition of those words to bring the public around to a new position without people ever engaging the rational parts of their brain. The Left rarely argues for its beliefs. It tricks people into adopting them, or compels people to engage in rituals that create the desired beliefs in their brain without argument. For another illustration of this, see “misinformation”.

About expertise

But we have to back up a minute and talk about expertise. We all sense the problem here. Real expertise is a valuable thing. If you have a medical question, you ask a doctor, or a doctor-friend, or (and importantly) maybe you ask someone whose opinions on this topic you’ve found helpful before, even if their formal education ended with high school. I have a PhD in Physics, our 8-year-old daughter does not, I would suggest you bring any serious scientific inquires to me rather than her under most circumstances. Expertise is a good thing, just like with science, Christians have to be careful not to malign the good thing just because the word is so often abused.

But the word is often abused. Clearly, a whole lot of “experts” just don’t act like experts. Some of them seem to be just not that smart (one reason I often say “credentialed class” instead of “experts”). Some of them, and I might put a guy like Fauci in this column, probably are smart, but are so politically compromised now that you can’t trust them - if their politics and their expertise ever conflict, politics wins every time. And then you have totally fake experts, usually progressive activists who create institutions like The Nonpartisan Expert Center on Gas Appliances, who can then be appealed to by elected Democrats and the media when they want a “nonpartisan” “expert” who will tell them what they want to hear.

The Left today wants the United States to be a progressive technocracy where all the decisions about everything are made by experts (or “experts”). One result of this has been the death of opinion as a thing. There is only the Correct position as expressed by Experts or the State, and then there is misinformation and disinformation and bigotry and all that stuff. You can’t just have your own beliefs about something, humanity has progressed past that now.

The misinformation that is true

So yes, “misinformation” is another word whose meaning keeps changing. Before, I think, the word meant something like “information that someone knows to be false, which they try to put out into the public discourse and consciousness anyway”. Defined in this way, elected officials and legacy media are the main producers of misinformation.

But the word has changed in some bizarre ways, and for that I submit to you a Reddit ban on discussion about Biden’s mental state.

Now I find this fascinating because the implication seems to be, claiming that Biden has dementia or cognitive decline “falls squarely under the category of misinformation” even if it is true. Why? Because you are (allegedly) not an expert in a position to make that diagnosis. Only Biden’s doctor can say he has dementia. For you to make that claim is misinformation even if it is or might be true.

But… isn’t that just an opinion you hold, an opinion you could hold after intelligent observations of the man? You could be wrong, sure, opinions can be wrong. But it isn’t misinformation.

THE END

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1. One reason I’m hesitant here is because if our current rulers did tighten border security, they wouldn’t do it to deal with the problems we actually have. They would do it as one more mechanism to control their political enemies. Because that’s really center in their mind for everything they do. So be careful what you ask for, with this crowd.