The lines between those lies have so blurred that only a neologistic portmanteau, dismisinfoganda, fully captures recent reality.<\/strong><\/p>\n Like an old hip-hip song, let\u2019s break it down:<\/p>\n Ergo, dismisinfoganda is the politicized spreading or squelching of claims without, or counter to, adequate empirical evidence.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dismisinfoganda remains agnostic about motivation, which is often opaque even to the claim\u2019s originator. Moreover, what matters most is not the creation of the claim but its propagation. People tend to believe, and pass along, claims that they believe substantiate their ideological views or further their material interests. The selective process (spread or ignore) occurs regardless of the claim originator\u2019s intent.<\/p>\n A 1975 book by Tom Burnam\u00a0updated in 1986<\/a>\u00a0called\u00a0The Dictionary of Misinformation<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell) now looks rather quaint. Most of its 302 undocumented pages the author used to explain proper usage of words like zeppelin, which, in addition to being in the name of one of the\u00a0greatest rock-n-roll bands ever<\/a>, was the only lighter-than-air airship that was both steerable and rigid. Some simply corrected common elisions of history, where phrases like the \u201cEmancipation Proclamation\u201d come to stand in for the Thirteenth Amendment, or misattribution of origins, like Charles Darwin being the first person to elucidate biological evolution. Important stuff for copy editors and fact checkers but harmless for the most part.<\/p>\n Mission-critical matters simply fail if they are erroneous. If an engineer denies that two plus two equals four and tries to launch a rocket into space, s\/he isn\u2019t even going to be able to build the rocket, much less provide others with the\u00a0schadenfreude<\/a>\u00a0of watching the thing explode on the launch pad.<\/p>\n Specious commercial claims also tend to go down in flames, although only metaphorically and sometimes too slowly. Competitors and consumers have strong incentives to expose the truth that such-and-such company\u2019s product claims are false or misleading and nobody else much cares, which keeps noise to a minimum. Of course companies may also try to spread disinformation about competitors but they have to do so surreptitiously or consumers would immediately discount it. The current mix of customer feedback (Yelp! and such), expert opinion (via\u00a0Consumer Reports<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and the like), costly quality signaling (like\u00a0UL<\/a>\u00a0and others), and product databases\/aggregators (like\u00a0CPID<\/a>), remains imperfect but in normal times (which these are not<\/a>), it works well enough. One hopes that any private attempt to \u201ccancel\u201d any such\u00a0bona fide<\/em>\u00a0commercial information assessor or disseminator, the way that\u00a0social media site Parler<\/a>\u00a0was shut down earlier this year, the departments of justice and commerce would meet with swift and sure retribution.<\/p>\n Parler, of course, was not a major source of commercial information but rather a forum for the sharing of political opinion and policy information, which one would think would be protected by the\u00a0First Amendment<\/a>, which states that \u201cCongress shall pass no law \u2026 abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.\u201d While it is true that Congress did not directly shut down Parler, a panoply of laws and administrative policies made it lawfully possible for private parties to do so and some,\u00a0including myself<\/a>, have argued that regulations and taxes are so high that traditional public-private distinctions have broken down. If the government can essentially outsource its dirty business to corporations, the Bill of Rights becomes a dead letter.<\/p>\n Florida recently retaliated against what its governor terms \u201cBig Tech Censorship\u201d by passing a\u00a0Transparency and Technology Act<\/a>\u00a0that tries to force social media companies to inform Floridians of their banning\/blocking policies and to apply them to all users consistently. The legality of the measure has been\u00a0questioned<\/a>\u00a0although many states, including ironically enough the one where Silicon Valley is located, regularly regulate out-of-state companies doing business within them.<\/p>\n At least the subject is being debated, probably because Big Tech Censorship of a law regarding Big Tech Censorship would be more than a little ironic.\u00a0A much more important issue is dismisinfogandizing by federal officials, especially Anthony Fauci.<\/strong>\u00a0AIER<\/a>\u00a0and others have repeatedly exposed his lies, half-truths, and flip-flops (and floppy pitching arm) and yet somehow this superannuated individual retains his job, power, and prestige.<\/p>\n The most recent revelation, however, may finally drive him from the policy scene. In case you haven\u2019t heard, a\u00a0consensus<\/a>\u00a0is now emerging that the hypothesis that the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 came out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology needs further study. That doesn\u2019t mean that the CCP deliberately unleashed the virus on the world or even covered it up, just that for some reason\u00a0earlier indications<\/a>\u00a0that lab workers experienced Covid-like sickness in November 2019 did not fully register until recently.<\/p>\n The point here is that a politicized claim with major policy implications that Fauci adamantly\u00a0dismissed<\/em>\u00a0as absurd in\u00a0May 2020<\/a>\u00a0he now says\u00a0a year later<\/a>\u00a0needs investigation as he is \u201cnot convinced\u201d that the virus emerged naturally. Far from a one-off mistake, Fauci\u2019s outright dismissal of claims with empirical backing forms part of a pattern of behavior displayed across the federal and some state governments regarding election reforms and results, police brutality, urban rioting, fiscal and monetary policy, and other important policy areas.<\/p>\n While that pattern of dismisinfoganda hardly proves a Deep State or Blue State conspiracy, it should deeply trouble all Americans that high profile and highly paid members of its government cannot seem to\u00a0reason correctly<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong>A real scientist working in the public interest would have said a year ago what Fauci is now saying regarding the origins of the novel coronavirus: \u201cHere is what we know, and here is what we still need to learn.\u201d Instead, he leveraged his (undeserved) popularity and\u00a0traditional journalist deference for authority<\/a>, especially of the white lab coat variety, to stave off a line of inquiry that could have saved lives by speeding therapeutic and vaccine development.<\/p>\n Alas, I see no way of significantly reducing dismisinfoganda other than ideas that I have previously espoused:<\/p>\n A glimmer of hope lies in the fact that some drastic\u00a0people<\/a>\u00a0and institutions still have the incentive and wherewithal to expose dismisinfoganda, and they were the ones responsible for bringing the\u00a0Wuhan lab story back into view<\/a>\u00a0with compelling\u00a0new details<\/a>. But the fact that a highly educated dear friend of mine recently refused to see me in person because I wouldn\u2019t consent to wear an N95 mask for hours even though he was vaccinated and I have something at least as good, natural immunity, is telling.<\/p>\n The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0claims that\u00a0natural immunity is no better<\/a>\u00a0than the mRNA \u201cvaccines,\u201d and NPR argues that Covid survivors should\u00a0still get vaccinated<\/a>, but who can believe them, or\u00a0Fauci<\/a>, on such matters anymore, especially when important policies with profound civil liberties implications, like\u00a0vaccine passports<\/a>, remain under consideration?\u00a0Therein lies the true cost of runaway dismisinfoganda. Many Americans once believed government officials unless\/until they had good reason to doubt them but increasingly they disbelieve officials unless\/until they have reason to believe them.<\/strong>\u00a0Maybe that is a good thing as it will eventually induce Americans to ask why they continue to pay the salaries of people they cannot implicitly trust to do their respective jobs.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/s3\/files\/inline-images\/news-800x508.jpg?itok=gATcwify\")
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