Time to put an end to the lying
Trump, Musk, Kennedy could end the “Political Information Complex”
Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election November 5th is going to change lives in many ways.
Most significantly, the world’s view of media – especially large, corporate mainstream media – is going to be radically altered as shocked people realize that much of what passed for “news” in recent years was actually blatant propaganda and shameless lies.
Think about it: as of this morning, the man who coined the phrase “fake news” is working side-by-side with the man who bought Twitter to permit citizens to speak without censorship. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are working as a team, and the symbiotic relationship between government communications teams and their media mouthpieces can now be blasted wide open.
It’s gonna be awesome.
It is almost impossible to exaggerate the damage that has been done to the psyche, the will, and the morale of citizens brutalized by government efforts to invent and control media narratives. Scott Jennings refers to it as the “Political Information Complex.”
COVID-19 was perhaps the most blatantly extreme example of lies and misinformation used to control the population’s thoughts and actions through such manipulation, but it’s just one example. COVID weaponized spending of tax dollars on an overwhelmingly intense propaganda campaign which actually persuaded many citizens that they should abandon their God-given rights: that was quite a feat, by that Political Information Complex.
In the US, government’s ability to spin residents with their own money was greatly enhanced in 2013, when then-president Barack Obama amended the Smith-Mundt Act. This gave the feds “great power to covertly influence public opinion” by making it legal for the Intelligentsia to disseminate government-sponsored propaganda to the very taxpayers who fund it.
In Canada, we have grown quite accustomed to paying half of everything we earn to various levels of government knowing full well they are going to use the money to create campaigns to lie to us. We all grew up with the CBC; we know how it works. Yet, we hand over the money anyway: “bend over and spread ‘em,” the blunt old saying goes. We’ve been bendin’ over and spreading ‘em knowingly and willingly for decades; here we stand, ready to receive.
But wait – November 6th, 2024 feels different. Donald Trump, the builder-turned-politician who does not fear to tell a reporter to their face that they are fake news working for a terrible outlet now has possession of the most important podium on Earth. Behind him stand Elon Musk of “X” (Twitter); and Robert F. Kennedy, who sues deceitful corporations for a living.
In my family, we like to laugh that my career in media started the summer I turned 10, when I went to work delivering the Detroit Free Press with my big sister. We reported to the “Station” at 5am every morning to pick up a Schwinn bike load of papers for delivery; we got a copy to bring home to read every day too.
From the first article I ever sold to the Toronto Star in 1985; to reporting for Taxi News and launching the East York Voice; and then working as a press secretary for politicians provincially and federally, I have spent my entire lifetime swimming – sometimes almost drowning – in a professional media environment. Sometimes I was Media; other times I was Media Relations.
Never, ever, ever would I have lied or expected anyone I worked for to lie. That would be the anathema to our existence. The whole entire challenge of all of the jobs was to uncover the truth, or to put the truth in best light possible to get support for it. Spending effort and energy to convince someone to believe something that was blatantly untrue would have been stupid and divisive.
Which, when I think of the past 10 or 15 years, is basically what we’ve lived through: stupid and divisive.
Now, we have a chance to do better. With Trump and Musk and Kennedy, we have an opportunity to end the stupidity and the divisiveness and the lying. We could commit now to get back to the basic truths, one of which has got to be that truth is better than lying.
Scott Jennings nails it, must listen pic.twitter.com/1I5SdxgYAz
— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) November 6, 2024
The 2024 election was an indictment of the “Political Information Complex,” Scott Jennings says.
A Political Information Complex which feels comfortable running an advertisement advising women to lie to their husbands would probably also feel comfortable lying to voters.
