In an act of editorial cowardice, the Economist devotes a leading editorial plus an entire special section to the problem of disinformation yet never mentions the Steele dossier and Hunter Biden laptop lie.
Its package is timely for all the reasons I?ve written about: Disinformation is likely to flow in even greater abundance to influence the 2024 vote. But it also botches the most important insight. The anonymous AI-generated disinformation on the web that preoccupies the magazine?s editors is trivial in effect next to official disinformation from government sources circulated by mainstream media.
The Economist details a surreptitious Russian plot to blame America for dengue fever in Africa. It ignores a story of open disinformation of gobsmacking continuing influence, which has half of America watching as the other half (and most of our political class) lie about what happened after 2016. If the magazine thinks these voters aren?t drawing conclusions that will shape the 2024 outcome, it needs its medication adjusted.
Let?s step back: Political causes may be good or bad, but few or nonexistent are those campaigns or campaigners who have been unwilling to lie in their causes.
Eisenhower lied about the U-2 program in one of the best causes ever, keeping a check on Soviet ICBM development.
Sam Harris, the popular podcaster and neuroscientist, exhibited his essential adulthood when he recognized and approved the laptop lie because of the importance he attached to defeating Trump.
Knowing when you lied and why you lied is psychologically healthy. Do I think Leon Panetta, the longtime respected congressman and Obama CIA chief, is of healthy mind? Yes. He and colleagues saw that it would help Joe Biden to associate Hunter?s laptop with Russia and left unspoken between them that it was a lie.
The Economist, in contrast, gives us a blaring, billboard-like exhibition of the psychological disorder known as splitting. See if you recognize the pattern:
Splitting means claims and assertions hostile to Mr. Trump should be repeated and emphasized; any that aren?t should be suppressed.
The Steele dossier should be trumpeted until it stops being useful for discrediting Mr. Trump and starts to discredit his enemies?in which case it should never be mentioned again.
If a statement is true and favorable to Mr. Trump, the only motive for voicing it is pro-Trumpism. (This will create problems for weather reporters if Mr. Trump says it?s raining and it?s actually raining.)
Russian meddling can?t both have happened and have been trivial?because the first part sounds anti-Trump but the second doesn?t. This is unacceptable to the splitting mind.
I know it would be unthinkable at this late date for our media and political elites to come clean. It would amount to abdicating the election to Mr. Trump.
Telling the truth, unfortunately, needed to start long ago before it could change the moment we?ve reached today.





And yet the perverse consequences ought to be beating us over the head. As David Brooks of the New York Times tweeted after Mr. Trump won 11 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016: ?Our job in the media is to capture reality so that when reality voices itself, like last night, people aren?t surprised. Pretty massive failure.?
In 2015 Donald Trump was a noisy celebrity ranting about illegal immigration. Nine years later, he and his legions have an epic narrative to tell themselves, true in many particulars, about the U.S. government and media thwarting them with lies and fabricated evidence.
Most of all, in bold letters, our current fix should recall the wisdom of the media?s former motto: ?Without fear or favor.? Or as Walter Lippmann put it a century ago, ?In his professional activity it is no business of [the reporter?s] to care whose ox is gored.?
We tell the truth and let the chips fall because we don?t know where the chips will finally land even if we think we do. Moreover, once we allow ourselves to start lying to the public for its own good, inevitably our reasons for doing so become more corrupt and self-seeking over time. Whatever his demerits, the press now paints Mr. Trump in impossibly lurid colors to justify its past behavior. Witness also the ?Trump bump? in paid subscriptions and TV ratings. Lying about Mr. Trump works commercially for media owners even as it benefits Mr. Trump too. In fact, nothing has been more profitable, even salvational, for many mainstream media companies than MAGA.
But the ultimate exploiter is Joe Biden, cynically using Mr. Trump?s antichrist image as a lever to shove his unwanted self down his own party?s throat despite age and poor polls.
If Mr. Trump now wins?he would only have to draw a middling hand in November?the recriminations against Mr. Biden will be scalding and eviscerating. The blame game might wreck the Democratic Party for a generation.

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