“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

— George Orwell, “1984”

Please excuse a question in the lead, but why do we in the modern world — with better and shinier tools to mine certitude and gather facts — have such difficulty with the truth? Or have we always been a race of liars and now simply have better ways to determine the breadth and depth of our mendacity?

The latest iteration of a disinformation assault came amid the wet, muddy ravages of Hurricane Helene, whose devastation has wreaked havoc in western North Carolina, cutting lifelines such as roads and bridges to the area. But no sooner had residents there awakened to find their lives and property in disarray, did former President Donald Trump start lying about relief efforts there and in Georgia.

Such despicability was then eagerly passed along among those hoping to discredit the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the current administration, both in official statements from politicians and in social media posts from trolls to true believers.

All of which added confusion to chaos, hampering the complex challenges in providing relief in a dangerous situation. In short, the lies needlessly imperiled both residents and relief workers in the hardest hit areas.

Go ahead. Blame it on a presidential election year if you want. But that would ignore that the world is awash in disinformation — not something said or written in error but deliberate deceit — and that lying is now a national pastime for some and that believing those lies is now commonplace for others.

Nor have serious consequences for dishonesty made much of a difference. CBS bounced five execs and Dan Rather left the anchor desk after the network published a story about George W. Bush based on bad intel in 2005. Fox News, at a cost of $780 million, famously lied on the air that Dominion Voting Systems was complicit in “stealing” the 2020 presidential election. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones owes Newtown, Conn., parents $1 billion and change for trafficking in the sewage that they and their murdered first graders were crisis actors.

We are well beyond “alternative facts,” weapons of mass destruction, garden variety online rumors, cigarette companies peddling doubt or any of a thousand pants-on-fire Pinocchio devices. One might wonder, too, do we, as consumers of information, bear any responsibility in the rising sea of deceit? Are we complicit when we shrug or shake our heads or write commentaries and then move on?

Nothing so captured the current penchant not simply for lying, but also for the entitlement to do so with impunity, as when J.D. Vance, during the vice presidential debate, whined to moderator Margaret Brennan that “The rules were you guys weren’t going to fact check.” Seriously? Complaints about being fact checked are usually the purview of those challenged by the truth.

That shoe fit for much of Vance’s evening, but he was correct about one thing: CBS’s previous pledge was not to fact check him or Gov. Tim Walz in real time even though journalists are trained to push back against fiction. Giving politicians free rein to lie during a debate — then take to social media to shore up any fact-checked fallout afterward — is akin to journalistic malpractice.

So bless Margaret Brennan. She couldn’t help herself. After Vance railed against Springfield, Ohio, immigrants, she reminded him — and us — that many of the Haitian immigrants were there legally. After the wonkish, legal, mansplaining salad with which Vance countered, Brennan thanked him for what we already knew: The immigrants were there legally.

Her fact check induced criticism from Vance’s political camp, sure that because hers was the only on-air pushback against a smooth, fast and loose barrage of blather — from the 2021 transfer of power being “peaceful” to an inflated number of children having been “lost” to Vice President Harris forking over $100 billion in assets to the Iranians. Some of his claims were close, most not. Either way, no cigar.

Walz, for his part, talked all around the question of his being in Tiananmen Square during the 1989 uprising. After his tortured explanation of trips to China, Brennan repeated the question. He finally said he had misspoken, a simple and refreshingly honest answer.

Some in this country want to build a wall. We already are. We’re doing it every day because if the truth sets us free, the barrier between the light of such truth and the darkness of disinformation grows ever higher.

This story was published by Nebraska Examiner, an editorially independent newsroom providing a hard-hitting, daily flow of news. Read the original article: https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2024/10/14/light-darkness-and-the-wall-betw...

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