Only Darkness Can Save the Sunlight
Take five minutes out of your day, because this Washington Post online discussion of the “global information disorder” has to be seen to be believed.
For example:
No one is this obtuse this late. They know. They know that fact claims that would have gotten you thrown off of social media platforms a year ago for spreading weird conspiracy theories are now casually presented as fact.
But it doesn’t stop them from presenting the slogans — “conspiracy theory,” “disinformation” — as uncontested categories of fact, clean and simple things that represent a sharp line between obvious truth and obvious falsehood. They speak as if there is no contest: There is truth, government declares it, and people who argue with government truth are presenting disinformation.
Totally reliable position — can’t spot any agendas in it.
Like Hillary Clinton warning that free speech can lead people to authoritarian sentiment, so we have to have government regulate what people are allowed to say and write and read so we can prevent authoritarianism, or like retired army generals effectively calling for a military commissariat and political surveillance to prevent the politicization of the armed forces, we’ve descended yet again into a nonsense world in which claims mean the opposite of what they say at face value. People arguing that we have to stop X are arguing for X, and doing so in increasingly naked ways. We need to aggressively prevent the free exchange of facts and ideas so we can have a more honest and trustworthy public sphere, they said with a straight face.
To turn to one of the people who can always be trusted to present the most obvious example, here’s professional human cartoon Keith Olbermann arguing that we need to protect our democracy and prevent a coup d’etat by crushing political enemies with the instruments of state power:
We need to repress our way to a more vibrant culture of democratic pluralism.
This argument is becoming the default of the “mainstream,” with increasingly obvious desperation, and there are no mysteries about what kind of road it suggests we’re taking into the future.
The whole Russia/Ukraine dumpster fire along with the long-delayed economic slow-motion collapse has only added veracity to your observations on the whole “let us do evil so good may come” mentality. I can’t believe for the most part that they truly believe the words coming out of their own mouths. Or at least I hope not. If they aren’t merely evil but also incredibly dull-witted and stupid enough to believe their own lies, well, we may be in for a worse time of than I thought. C.S. Lewis put it very well:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”