becomes, the more the purveyors of it benefit. It’s
a vicious cycle and increasing numbers of Americans
suffer the consequences of an increasing detachment
from reality.
How did this come about?
In American politics, exaggeration and puffery have
long been a part of life. So has yellow journalism,
where reporters pursue an agenda with little regard
for accuracy. But outright misinformation -- intentionally
false statements -- weren’t a part of
modern daily public discourse in America until the
2016 presidential campaign, when misinformation
was adopted by Donald Trump as his routine political
strategy and then expanded exponentially during
his term as the U.S. President. This development
was not ridiculed so much as it was welcomed as
evidence of some twisted type of success over his
adversaries who were mired in mere facts. It was a
system that worked really well, in frightening ways.
It seems to be impossible to shove that demon
back into the bottle now that it’s escaped. President
Biden has tried. He has spoken bluntly about
those who promulgate coronavirus misinformation:
“They’re killing people.” (By the way, that’s a
statement of fact based on medically proven deaths
from the virus, resulting in American bodies that
can be counted, the vast majority of them unvaccinated.
So it’s true.) They chose not to accept the
vaccines available to them because of widespread
misinformation about vaccinations and they suffered
the medically expected consequences.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t only them. As the devotees
of vaccine misinformation ended up in America’s
intensive care hospital beds, other innocent
Americans were denied life-saving care. They have
died too, as victims of pervasive misinformation and,
more importantly, as victims of the choices made
by the millions of American who actively continue
to choose to listen to it, believe it and spread it.
Misinformation moves quickly
In the 1970s Yale psychologist Irving Janis demonstrated
that people in groups tend to behave
bizarrely to preserve their group’s identity by rejecting
even self-evident truths. Any information
contrary to the group’s pre-existing views is rejected
almost immediately. He aptly called it groupthink.
More recently, a 2018 study at MIT showed
that false news spreads faster on Twitter than
true stories, because it’s 70 percent more likely to
be retweeted. Real people, not bots, are doing the
retweeting. They do it because sharing made-up
information makes it seem like they know something
that others don’t. Lies are portrayed as “secret
truths” that were only recently discovered despite
coverups at high levels. It shows they are privy to
inside information that others don’t have, and they
are special because they can access it through their
secret channels. Accuracy is a secondary consideration
or just irrelevant.
The result is that the Americans, who are trying
to impress others with supposed secret information
about some wild COVID-related conspiracy, are killing
their fellow Americans, using the coronavirus
as a weapon, at least recklessly if not knowingly.
They are also killing American businesses, education
and sports because the country cannot gain
control over the pandemic, thanks to them and the
misinformation they spread. And it’s all happening
too fast to stop it.
It’s not even legal
Attempts to control COVID misinformation to stop
the killing are also mischaracterized as an assault
on free speech guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
Finns and the rest of the world are left wondering
how silly American law can be if outrageously
inaccurate “free speech” about masks and vaccines
means that America cannot do what’s necessary for
public health based upon medical facts.
American law isn’t that dumb. Free speech does
not include the right for anyone to knowingly spread
lies without consequences (for example, yelling “fire”
in a crowded theater is not legally protected free
speech). But the real facts about how the law works
have been drowned out by more misinformation,
including misinformation about the law too. The
current debate about free speech in America has
almost nothing to do with the law. Misinformation
is prevailing yet again.
Meanwhile, more Americans and their loved ones
are going to get killed but somebody sure will get
to look like they’re special by retweeting the latest
medical misinformation to their group. That’s so
American. That sounds harsh, but it’s true -- so it
will probably be buried by more misinformation --
until maybe someday America will learn something
about fact-based honesty from the Finns.
SAM MAGAZINE 3/21 | 23