The Evolution of Misinformation

How "Truth" is now sacrificed for ideology

Small Gods cover art by Josh Kirby

“There are some things which appear to be the truth, which have all the hallmarks of truth, but which are not the real truth. The real truth must sometimes be protected by a labyrinth of lies.”

-       Terry Pratchett Small Gods

“What is happening with truth these days?” A friend recently asked me this question in the wake of both misinformation and outright untruths being promoted. I’ve been watching what has been developing, especially in the MAGA Republican/Evangelical Conservative circles and I believe we need to be aware of how “truth” is being used and manipulated. Especially when it is being manipulated by people with great influence. It used to be that telling falsehoods was a disqualifying character trait, but now it’s so par-for-course that we are expecting politicians to outright lie, if not defending their like when they do. That so many “Christians” not only are caught up in this activity but intentionally participating in perpetuating lies means we need to know how and why they feel they can do that. However, in order to see where we are we need to look back a little-

The Trump Presidency: Partisanship and Disbelief

Misinformation I believe has changed over the past ten years. This change has happened in part due to different impulses that fueled or allowed for Trump’s misinformation machine to begin to warp reality for most people. The two interrelated forces that worked during the Trump Presidency to cover for Trump’s lying were Partisanship and Disbelief.

In one sense Trump became President at the perfect time because extreme partisanship became the unofficial “rule” in Congress under President Obama’s time in office. Persons like Mitch McConnell made obstructing anything Obama wanted to do, down to minor appointments, priority #1. Republicans especially were infused with the idea, “If they win, we lose.” You saw this particularly in Trump’s first impeachment. There was little real argument that what Trump had done wasn’t Presidential, even that it wasn’t impeachable, but that Democrats were, “Trying to undo the election.” This I found ridiculous at the time because impeaching Trump meant Mike Pence would be President. Republicans could have had a Republican President who was also an Evangelical for theoretically 10 years but Trump being impeached meant Democrats “winning”.

I think this Partisanship was also coupled with a level of disbelief on the part of many average conservatives. I believe many simply couldn’t wrap their minds around someone as narcissistically malicious as Trump. He in their minds simplycouldn’t be lying as much as he did. To be fair, Trump was also the President, so one could understand people wanting to assume he knew more, had special briefings, etc. There were so many who said Trump was going to “settle into” his role, take the weight of the job seriously, or definitely wouldn’t cross THAT line.

I think for most of the Trump Presidential years most misinformation and “fake news” issues at least had these two factors at play. However, I believe things have changed and there are at least three factors I’ve seen at work when it comes to those who both support Trump and who are spreading misinformation right now.

1.     The Intentionally Low Information Person

I’ve encountered a few people on social media that are not belligerent or misinformed, they are uninformed. The thing is, at this point it seems intentional. Someone saying, “Maybe Trump really believed he won the 2020 election” hasn’t seen the evidence. That person at this point isn’t willing to educate themselves and I suspect it is because if they are fully aware they wouldn’t be able to ethically support Donald Trump. These are the “I didn’t see that” people. For those folks maybe informing them, or pointing them to good information will enlighten, but mostly these folks don’t want to know the truth.

2.     The Delusional

What is sad is how many have fallen into an information silo that leaves them in a state of utter delusion. These are those who dismiss Trump’s convictions (held liable for rape, fraud, and 34 felonies) as “Democratic plots”. These same will post “questions” about the government being able to direct hurricanes or will jump on rumors that FEMA relief is being “stolen”. The difficulty with these persons is they have left the real world. They have given themselves over to a fantasy world created by Conservative Media.

They’ve done this for two reasons I believe, first like our “low information” persons above they do not want to deal with the truth. This gets coupled with an addiction to outrage, and people get to a place where fear, paranoia, and outrage is how they respond to almost everything. The “Government” is intentionally trying to hurt people, those who oppose “conservative” issues are demonic or literally demons, etc.

The second reason people have become “delusional” is, in my opinion, that outrage has become their primary religion. They’ve fully bought into the cult of Trump, and the liturgy of their religion is one of self-righteous outrage. No matter what the issue is, it somehow leads to them needing to be angry for some reason and pointing to the “hope” that Trump will solve whatever they are angry about.

The sad thing is there is nothing to be done with the delusional. This perhaps is the most difficult place many find themselves with friends and loved ones. There is absolutely no reasoning with them because they have abandoned reason. The best response I’ve been able to give to those who believe unreasonable things is to ask, “Why do you want that to be true?” Or “Why is it important for you to believe that?” However, most of the time the only good option with the delusional is to not feed their delusion. We sometimes need to tell people, “When you’re ready to rejoin rational society we’ll be waiting.”

3.     Those Intentionally Being Deceitful (and why Christians think they can do this)

If you ask me who scares me more in terms of a politician J.D. Vance or Trump, at this point I find Vance far more problematic. Trump I honestly would put in a more “delusional” place himself when it comes to his relationship to the truth. For Trump everything is simply opposite day. If it makes him look good it’s true, even if it isn’t. If something could possibly make those he opposes look good (even a response to a natural disaster) is must be either a lie or lied about to not be true. For Trump this is something he does as naturally as breathing, whether he himself believes it is almost immaterial at this point. In contrast Vance’s calculated lies during the Vice Presidential debate I found chilling. He intentionally lied about Trump and the Affordable Care Act, and that Trump had “Peacefully transitioned power”. He attempted to lie (again) about Haitian immigrants and was visibly frustrated when he couldn’t (“I thought the rules said no fact-checking”).

This to me is more insidious because Vance is intentionally and knowingly lying. Even more, he knows many people who are watching him not only know he is lying, but that his lies are preposterous. Yet he looked directly into the camera and did so anyway. But Vance is not the only one who does this. Mike Johnson also has routinely lied about J6. He along with Vance hasn’t been able to admit Trump lost the 2020 election. What is going on with these two men who claim to be Christians?

I believe J.D. Vance has given us a window into how this mentality operates. He did this with his statement that, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast,” What Vance revealed was his “story” was less important than the “truth” of what he is presenting ideologically. His ideologic “truth” is that immigrants are “ruining America”, and that “truth” was more important than the story being factually accurate. Then Vance pivoted to say something technically “true” while dodging his own culpability in advancing the story, “We are creating — we are — Dana, it comes from firsthand accounts from my constituents,” Now there were “people who said”, but you can find almost anyone who says anything right now! You’ll see this move done in other ways with, “people are concerned” or “there are reports” or “someone said” where yes those are technically true statements that are non-committal as to the speaker’s own conviction of fact. The thing is this type of “debate” is only effective when one side wants to promote an ideology that doesn’t exactly match reality.

However, the important part is to realize that Vance, Johnson and others see their ideological “truths” as more important than reality. America should be a “Christian Nation” so it doesn’t matter what we do with the historical record to make people think it is. Trump and “us” should have won the 2020 election so it’s ok to make people feel like he did. “We” win (people vote for us) when people blame non-white people for their problems, so immigrants have to be the problem for everything. Even recently with Franklin Graham the idea is that the “government” must not be good at doing anything so only religious-based emergency relief is doing anything good in hurricane relief (BTW donate to my organization that supports my lifestyle).

Think about how detrimental this is, say there is a party that runs on “Doing ABC will fix X problem”. Let’s say they manage to convince people that their idea has merit, and they are elected and put their idea in motion. Imagine 2-3 years later and a large portion of the populace realizes that X is in fact, not fixed. On the contrary, doing ABC has had unforeseen consequences that have hurt people. These results are seen in the numbers, and experts have done studies and come to the conclusion, “Doing ABC does not fix X”. So, the public comes to that party and says, “We have to do something different because ABC doesn’t work.” Now imagine the party then saying, “You’re just listening to the Woke Agenda. Everyone with Common Sense™ knows ABC is a reflection of our American values. Many people say they’re happy with the job we’ve done implementing ABC.” But the people say, “The experts have told us ABC doesn’t do X.” Then the party says, “We’re not going to listen to experts, we’re listening to Common Sense™.”

This is what is important about the “hypothetical” scenario I just offered, for the “Party” promulgating their ideology is more important than solving X. This is because being “People who promote ABC” is now their identity. Fixing X or the unintended consequences of ABC are less important to them than their cultural affinity and being accepted by their peers within the “Party”. Therefore, the ideology is more “true” than reality. What’s terrifying is for the Republican Party what they have chosen to be “true” is their ideal of Donald Trump, not the reality.

This isn’t Just a Political Problem

This ideological capture is a problem within the church as well. There is a problem when our commitment to “truth” ignores people’s lived experiences. When we’re convinced our “rightness” will end in benefit that we ignore the rotten fruit that is revealed almost weekly in our midst. As I’ve written before about James, the litmus test of correct theology/ideology is that good fruit proves right belief, not that “right” belief promises good fruit.

Culturally we may be seeing a weather change in the toleration of this kind of dishonesty. In the past week I’ve seen numerous news shows that simply haven’t allowed prominent persons to come on and say whatever they pleased without challenge. I hope it is a sign of a recommitment to the truth at least in broadcast media. Because this mealy-mouthed ideological justifying of falsehood is both tiresome and dangerous.

And I hope the church sees that sooner rather than later.

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