Misinforming, Conservatively

SURELY BY NOW nearly everyone has noticed that now, more than ever, the world is full of B.S.. How could you not notice? With all the "improvements" in communication technology - cell phones, computers, etc. - and with the inevitable, inexorable progress of human history and knowledge, the amount of information available to your average citizen living almost anywhere in the world has multiplied billions of times in less than a generation. Few seem to have anticipated an unint3nded consequence of all this communication technology, knowledge, and communication, that not only is the world filling up with information, but also with misinformation. Despite our modern advantages in education and knowledge, like never before in all human history, perfectly intelligent folks are walking around unsupervised in public with a headfull of false information, false beliefs, not because of any deliberate desire to self deceive or to deceive others. but because with all this huge amount of both good and bad information available in everyone's back pocket, there are bound to be numerous cases in which people make incorrrect choices concerning what to believe and what not to believe. Although studies can be inconclusive, it seems evident that well educated people tend to embrace more good information and less false information than do those less formally educated, whose apparent lack of critical thinking skills result in false beliefs. And of course the very old and the very young are particularly vulnerable to misinformation, just as they are ro most things. There is yet another clearly observable, undeniable pattern to the misinformation so ambiant throughout the internet, the ocial media, the traditional media, and society generally; overwhelmingly, the vast majority of misinformation is both invented, promulgated, and embraced by conservatives,and not nearly so much by progressives. A cursory enumeration of the most prominent examples of widespread misinformation quickly demonstrates this. There is perhaps no lie in hisotry which has been momre widely circulated, with greater dishonesty and conviction, and embraced by so many people, with such devoted fervor, as, for example, Trump's big election lie, as we have come to call the election denial movement. conservatives invented, ebraced, and still embrace this ridiculous, false belief. The same is true of climate change denial, vaccine-phobia, and other scientific facts; it is the conservative community whch embraces the lie, and ignores or discards the truth. The list goes on, and becomes quite long. Who refuses to accept the reality of human evolution by natural seletion, liberals, or conservatives? Which group tends to much more fervantly embrace traditional religious beliefs, beliefs which are obviously untrue,such as creationism itself, without question? Again, the conservative community. It is also the conservative community which wants to ban books, and to teach a false verions of American history, a version according to which racism is no longer present in America, a version in which life in America has been from the beginning a fertile field of opportunity for all, one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all. In conservative states, if a public high school social studies teachers emphasizes the systeatic exploitation of labor in teh United States, or the persistance of racism, homophobia, and white Christian nationalist bigotry and violence, all of which are real, the teacher can lose her job. Welcome to the world of ubiquitous conservative misinformation.