Alternate Facts, Alternate Medicine, Alternate Reality

Funny how climate change, which is acknowledged by something like 99% of qualified scientists, is considered "controversial" and not settled science by the denier community.

Funny how Russian interference in the 2016 election, which is acknowledged  by 100% of the intelligence community, is considered "a deep state hoax" by right-wing conspiracy theorists.

Flat earth.  Moon landings.  Vaccines.

The list of facts that find they must compete with "alternate facts" for priority in the media is growing, and worrisome.  Like "alternate medicine," facts only become "alternate" when they cannot be proven or are proven false.  If something is proven to be true, it is not described as "alternate."

So why is this "alternate reality" being taken seriously by anyone?  Garry Kasparov says it's intentional Russian disinformation; a resurrection of the Soviet-era Orwellian DoubleSpeak employed by the government to keep their people in chaos.  I think there may be a lot of truth to that.

It needs to be wider publicized.

Garry Kasparov wrote:

President Donald Trump and his Republican defenders in Congress have followed his lead in declaring war on observed reality. Critical reports are "fake news," journalists reporting the facts are "enemies of the people," a phrase of Vladimir Lenin's, debunked conspiracy theories are repeated, and public servants testifying under oath about documented events are dismissed as Never Trumpers.

Unable to change the facts, Trump and his supporters instead try to shift the debate into an alternate universe where the truth is whatever they say it is today. Trump repeats the same lies over and over, and it's hard to say which is more troubling -- that his followers don't realize that they are lies or that they don't care. Globalization and the internet may have made the world smaller, but now we're experiencing a counterattack, the regionalization of truth.

The internet was supposed to shine the light of truth into every corner of the world, breaking the authoritarians' monopoly on information. But it has also become a light-speed delivery system of lies and propaganda. The web has been chopped into pieces. Like a shattered mirror, each fragment reflects a different distorted image instead of a single reality.