The War Against Alternative Information

I think this new law may backfire on the Government. People will begin to see the "emperor has no clothes".

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/01/the-war-against-alternative-information/

 

While so many are distracted by Trump, pronouns, "triggering" and other feelings-based "issues", the juggernaut continues to march. Just look at all the wonderful new regulations we now have to make sure we don't make any mistakes in our lives that can't be readily punished by the state. So many of them pushed through as 11th hour surprises (nothing suspicious about that of course). Instead of being wary of ALL government largess it seems like we're willing to tolerate it as long as the largess was ginned up by "our party". Look at all the whining about the lack of filibuster control for confirmations going forward. Well, who initiated THAT?

 

You are way too optimistic considering it is the people who have been demanding such things with a majority of Americans insisting the government and mass media they call evil lie to them for their own protection and most of them insisting that they are usually much too liberal about such things. Its mob rule and empire baby, and this train ain't stopping until she derails.

 

I am not sure that there isn't a mass of people in this country that are aware of the Government's lies and disinformation spin. If they continue to fight what investigative journalists ( and wikileaks ) expose, people will have to decide what is the real story, not the false news. The very nature of this "fight" will create a divide in what people accept as being spin or truth. Maybe it is meant to just create another "divide and conquer" tactic. Just wait until Trump is in office, and the spins and lies and misinformation comes pouring in from the mass media. They will not be able to tell what really is going on, Trump depends on that. Maybe the Government then will have to turn their focus on the mass media, that has 65 versions of a single act of the slimy shit Trump is going to promote. Maybe people will realize that alternative news is more often closer to revealing the truth behind his devious tactics.

 

According to forty years of surveys by the National Science Foundation, one in five Americans insists the sun revolves around the earth. That's not a lack of education, but Three Stooges slapstick where they are all used to arguing over the definition of stupid and who is the better example. A recent neurological study discovered that it was easy to encourage people to doubt even the most simple well known facts, such as Mickey Mouse being invented by Walt Disney, but when confronted with conflicting political information conservatives clung to their old beliefs. Disinformation is what got Trump elected precisely because nobody believes a word coming out of anyone's mouth unless it already agrees with what they believe.

Its networking systems logic where everyone is going on memory and paying more attention to whoever has the better memory. Its the default fallback position when it becomes obvious the lights are on, but nobody is home and is why people sometimes kill the messenger because the truth can actually hurt their own self-interest when they can't come to agreement on anything. In cases such as Martin Luther King using sustained peaceful protests, it can overcome this kind of mental inertia, but I see no signs of that happening in the US. Occupy Wallstreet was allowed to protest for a while but, then suppressed with the mayor of NYC arresting 26 reporters in one day and even using experimental military equipment without so much as a single lawsuit. The American public is hellbent on taking this just as far as they can allowing the government and even local police just as much power as they want. In fact, the military protested congress wanted to give them too much power to just arbitrarily round up citizens like so many cattle.

The idea of the government censoring all their information is appealing to such people so long as they get the kind of reassurances they like to hear such as Trump claiming he will make America great again.

 

Why is propaganda in quotes?

I can't believe people aren't actually more concerned. Misinformation is a terrible thing in the media, imho. I think it's good that the gov. is attempting to target sources of misinformation, and I don't think it's in the name of "Washingtons version". We still protect Free Speech and Freedom of the Press.