Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump, there are plenty of reasons to dislike him. Highly loutish and seemingly mentally unstable, he is the naked emperor who insists on pointing at his own nakedness. I instinctively dislike this delusional creature, for what it's worth.
Nevertheless, there is one frightening truth that keeps crying out, again and again. Unfortunately, only a few seem able to hear it. The phenomenon commonly dismissed as "fake news" is indeed a real danger. Mass manipulation has proven to be the most powerful weapon ever devised. Oligarchy-owned media in general and social media in particular, acting as a boomerang in the hands of the stupid, is worth more than all the nuclear weapons combined. Opportunistic, Trump spotted it and used it successfully to plant himself, dirty diapers and all, in the chair.
One of the most consequential examples of mass manipulation in recent history was Iraq and the disaster that followed. The only weapons of mass destruction found were bug sprays used to keep royal cockroaches at bay in their palaces, and the only radioactive source was Saddam's tightly controlled television, arguably no worse than its American counterpart. It all started with "fake news." The moral defeat was turned into "victory" – reality into a shameless show of clowns dodging the flying shoes.
At a more down-to-earth level, examples are everywhere. Consider marijuana, tobacco, and electronic cigarettes. It is apparently acceptable to burn out your lungs and brain with marijuana. Apparently, smoke becomes safe to inhale, as long as you buy it from the government. Throughout the city, posters claim that buying reasonably priced cigarettes from the so-called "black market" — often sold through Indigenous reserves — helps put guns on the streets. Really? No posters warn about the profits made from taxed tobacco or the legal arms trade.
Over the last few years, a shameful campaign against electronic cigarettes has flooded the news, providing virtually no scientific evidence. It's hard not to suspect the campaign was financed by a tobacco industry refusing to die. Although nicotine itself is not the primary cause of smoking-related disease, it is well documented as being one of the most addictive substances in widespread use. Anyone who has smoked, or still smokes, tobacco knows that the extremely overpriced products branded as Nicorette and similar others often do not work when attempting to quit. They are not designed or priced to help you. They are just another form of rip-off — manipulation with a lower voice, wearing a pharmacy badge instead of a press pass.
Millions of people die every year from smoking, yet those deaths are no longer news. Governments around the world heavily tax tobacco, turning addiction into a reliable source of revenue. Unlike many of the products offered by Big Pharma, electronic cigarettes are inexpensive and have proven effective for many smokers attempting to quit. In Canada, electronic cigarettes have been used for many years without any major incidents making national headlines.
With no new El Chupacabra or UFO sightings to fill a slow news cycle, a group of allegedly medical doctors here in Canada — following a wave of dubious reports originating in the United States — seized the moment with a press conference, announcing that a teenager in southern Ontario had arrived at an emergency room with lung damage allegedly caused by smoking electronic cigarettes. COVID-19, then unknown, became a new opportunity for a sponsored attack. Shamefully, no scientific evidence was ever presented to justify their alarming claims.
The resemblance to the George W. Bush administration's presentation at the United Nations before the invasion of Iraq was difficult to ignore. When a medical doctor makes such claims for an extra buck, without presenting scientific evidence, the white coat becomes more dangerous than a lifetime of chain-smoking, radon, and asbestos exposure combined.
Following that press conference, many people took the "civic" initiative to address the use of electronic cigarettes online. So did the governments. After all, they generated neither comparable tax revenue nor comparable pharmaceutical profits. Emerging in a swamp of predatory interests, the less harmful tobacco alternative became an easy target.
With the Canadian economy on the brink of serious trouble, fake news will only intensify and serve the manipulator well. Unfortunately, many major Canadian news organizations, including newspapers, have become increasingly partisan. Many of the so-called “Canadian” outlets are owned by the dubious and tragic side of today’s America – the La-La countryside of Trumpistan. In doing so, they no longer merely report events; they increasingly shape the reality through which those events are perceived for the benefit of the top 1%. Irresponsible capitalism is killing capitalism. The big fish rots from the head — and this one's brain is small, very small.
Those are just examples that happen to pass through my mind, in this very moment. A tiny spec from an infinity of crap around, oozing out there, at every corner of existence, without the help of any hypothetical dark energy.
Can humanity overcome the mass manipulation and survive the never-ending thick rivers of bullshit? The posters, the press conferences, the white coats — every one of them needed a human hand to build it, slowly, one lie at a time. AI needs no hand. It can manufacture posters, press conferences, and white coats by the millions, tailored to whoever is most willing to believe them. Now, with its rise, it is very hard to hope for the best without joining the Club of Deluded.
With the help of our delayed fellas around—those bi-dimensional comrades with voting rights and degrees in everything, including Ivermectin and Earth geometry—the stench of brown is the new aphrodisiac gold—the Golden Era.
(A draft was originally published on Facebook on December 11, 2019.)