Lying in Weight – Countering Mis- and Dis-Information

As technology gets more sophisticated, as the profound differences between Democrats and MAGAns define entirely different directions for every facet of our lives, the “one sure thing” is the rise of mis- and dis- information through the firehose of social media, traditional media, the pulpit of too many churches and temples, rallies and even in casual social gatherings. Today, highly biased conspiracy theory adherents have and actually use various tools to filter out any contrary information. Truth glances off these filters like bullets off an M1/A2 tank. Facts have never had less relevancy despite massive and often toxic proof to the contrary.

And extremist candidates, who could not rise from obscurity even to make it to a primary prior to the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs FEC (which took the spending cap off campaign expenditure not directly controlled by candidates and enabled the rise of SuperPACs), found easy money in just parroting the issue bias of mostly rightwing and Christina nationalist big bucks contributors. Without that judicial ruling, MAGA would not even exist today. Instead, MAGA replaced virtually the entire Republican Party. Scientific and medical experts are now vilified.

We have technology today than can scrape data from the ether, with automatic robotic (“bots”) creating tailored messages targeting individuals with alarming accuracy. AI has made that process scarily more efficient, even able to create audio-visual messaging with images and voices that seem to be high profile candidates themselves making convenient but completely and totally fabricated statements. Malign foreign governments – especially Russia, China, Iran and North Korea – have developed enhanced operations to spread mis- and dis- information to influence elections, embracing candidates that tout such evil nations’ priorities.

To make bad matters so much worse, this new incarnation of fake-news-spouting but genuine candidates have solidified their political power by embracing the messaging of such malign nations and the very conspiracy theories that an increased number of Americans treat as gospel. LA Times columnist, Michael Hiltzik (February 25th) examines the purveyors and those dedicated to root out these malign and false messages: “Prominent politicians, up to and including the former president, have promoted useless drugs as supposed cures for COVID-19. Partisan attacks on the safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines have expanded into attacks on all vaccines. Established scientific and medical authorities have been vilified on social media and on the airwaves and even been subjected to physical assault.

“The sheer volume of lies and misrepresentations injected into the political mainstream has some scientists despairing of ever regaining the public’s attention… ‘Scientists really recognize this as a problem, from what they see in the community and read in the news,’ says Tara Kirk Sell of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security. ‘They see the problems they have from misinformation and disinformation on the public health side and in the medical field and in other areas. They want to figure out how to deal with it. We’re providing some guidance for combating it and making people more resistant to it.

“Sell’s reference is to the ‘Practical Playbook for Addressing Health Misinformation’ just released by her center. The 65-page publication amounts to a road map for identifying misinformation and disinformation and applying the best strategies for counteracting it before it spreads.

“It’s part of an emerging genre of advice for scientists, public health officials and others who get confronted by rumors that interfere with their work, or by deliberate falsehoods; the latter is ‘disinformation,’ [also mal-information] as opposed to ‘misinformation,’ which may simply be widely accepted misunderstandings that may have innocent sources…

“One recommendation that most seem to have in common is to take a strategic approach: Disinformation campaigns can’t be defeated by ad hoc measures; they require an organized, proactive and targeted approach mounted by credible defenders of science… The effort is important because the disinformation has more than political consequences; it costs lives. Pseudoscience debunker Peter Hotez calculates that as many as 200,000 Americans may have perished from COVID after the vaccines were introduced because anti-vaccine propaganda dissuaded them from getting the shots.

“Cases of measles, which should have been eradicated in the U.S. years ago, are appearing again because of disinformation about the vaccines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts more than 20 measles cases so far this year in at least 11 states. That’s about one-third of the 58 cases recorded in all of last year, counted in only the first six weeks of 2024, suggesting that a more serious epidemic may loom on the horizon.

“Six cases have occurred in a single school in Florida, a state whose Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has placed anti-vaccine propaganda at the center of his public health policies. The school’s measles vaccination rate is about 89%, well below the 95% level thought to provide communal immunity protecting even the unvaccinated.”

Even with perhaps the currently most successful economy of any developed nation, MAGA candidates have managed to convince their cult-followers that the American economy is in shambles. Even as our immigration policy is a mess, and our border is clogged with an unmanageable gathering of asylum-seekers, the MAGA House refuses to pass a bi-partisan comprehensive immigration reform bill because MAGA chief Trump does not want Biden to look good. To the vast contingent of MAGA voters, despite over 60 judicial findings (many by Trump-appointed judges) of a fair election in 2020, that election was stolen.

But even as AI can amplify the threat of spreading dis- and mis- information, that technology can be particularly adroit, even on a very high-volume basis, at identifying the fakes and the false. But unless we take the threats of this tsunami of lies very seriously and adopt sophisticated countermeasures, we can kiss democracy good-bye.

I’m Peter Dekom, and unless we truly prioritize truth and facts over their fabricated alternatives, there indeed cannot be credible and fair elections.