The Imaginary Monsters Under the Bed
Mis, Dis, and Malinformation
Misinformation does not exist, nor do its more recently conjured up cousins: disinformation and malinformation.
Either something is true or false. There are, of course, opinions and nuance and massaging and context and partial truths and incomplete assertions and internet ravings littered about but in the end something is either a lie or it is not.
The epithets of mis, dis, and malinformation do not address those basic concepts and are only shut-up words, ways to imply someone is lying without actually having to prove they are lying.
Once something has been declared mis, dis, or mal, it is now beyond the pale of proper consideration. A statement tarred as such becomes the equivalent of the ravings of a street corner lunatic arguing with the clouds.
Since they do not exist – in fact, cannot actually exist at all – mis, dis, and mal are the equivalent of imaginary monsters under the bed of public discourse.
They are used not to inform or clarify but to scare, to terrify into silence and compliance. As the childhood fear of monsters can engender a fear of placing even one foot on the floor lest you be snatched away into the endless netherworld, mis, dis, and mal are intentionally deployed to keep the public quivering and silent under the covers lest they suffer societal opprobrium.
While not real, mis, dis, and mal carry more than a whiff of authority. Those who denigrate inconvenient facts or contradictory opinions do so purposefully by labeling them and do so for reasons of power, societal purchase, career advancement, and the chance to mingle with the elite that controls the global purse strings and beyond at the present moment.
And that personal advancement comes with an oozingly smug - though utterly misplaced – sense of self-satisfaction created by thinking that one is working for the public, that one is protecting others, that one is on the side of the good and the noble. And that anyone who disagrees can be comfortably dismissed as a purveyor of supposed societal rot because of the self-fulfilling prophetic nature branding things as mis, dis, and mal. Once consigned to the Mobius strip of putative falsehood, ideas and thoughts and facts very rarely escape.
It is not a coincidence that words that were never uttered at all by anyone until very recently have become so prevalent in current conversation. But why?
Why is so much of the theoretically educated public (in fact, the more “educated” the more likely to believe in and deploy mis, dis, and mal) going alone with the ruse, accepting the proclamations of the censors and their enablers?
Is it as simple as Homer Simpson’s famed dictum that ‘It takes two to lie – one to lie and one to listen.’?
In other words, the mis, dis, and mal labels only have influence if the public lets it happen, if it “listens” to the inherent lie behind them.
Or is it more complicated, the end result of years of terrible educational standards and an ever more poisonous public square?
As to the latter, it is very simple for one to take mis, dis, and mal at face value and be done with it. Problem solved, further thought not necessary. One then does not have to further engage and can feel as if they have risen above the tumult.
As to recent and current educational standards and practices, they have set the stage for this moment. A proper education is about more than facts and dates – it’s about teaching people to look beyond such things, to see the entire picture as best as possible.
If one gains nothing else in school, one should have at least created some semblance of a built-in bullshit detector, an ability to say “wait, what?” when confronted with concepts that seem dodgy.
Instead, the building of said detectors has been replaced with the building of bullshit replicators. The idea of questioning authority has died on campus. Now - save for the occasional misguided protest about something they aggressively do not understand but want to be able to feel good that they “did their part for justice” or whatever – students at all levels demand to be coddled, to be lectured to rather than engage in discussions, to be treated like children.
And this intentional self-infantilizing of society goes well beyond the campuses, making the acceptance of mis, dis, and mal not only possible, but inevitable.
In the end, if one remains a child, one will always fear the monsters under the bed.