Fact Rhetoric

  Public rhetoric has historically been low on fact verbiage and high on value verbiage.  As such, main street imbibed "rhetoric speech" as one source of "news", and then cross referenced their emotional biases against "fact speech", presumed to identify true space/time events and patterns. Humans integrated these differing cognitive elements and thereby produced a somewhat workable civilization.  

     Throughout history there have been autocrats seeking to oppress minorities, majorities nations, and worlds.  It is the human tragedy.  In the main, oppressions have been about mobilizing economic and physical forces arrayed to overwhelm opponents.  "Trojan Horse and Manchurian Candidate" type psychological ploys have occasionally found their way into despot arsenals, but have not been often deployed weapons.  Oppressors seek to control wealth, not destroy it.  It is somewhat comforting  that WMD's,  biological and nuclear,  are not weapons of choice, but.....

     in todays gigibit delivered reality, a new WMD has come of age. In Startrek, the Romulans had a  cloaking devise that obscured selected matter to their combat advantage. In today's cyber culture an oppressor can achieve the same advantage by obscuring societal access to "fact speech".  The mechanics are obvious and simple.  When best truths are deeply hidden in a sea of alternatively palatable fact representations,, then only rhetoric remains as a decision strategy.....and he who rhetorics best, wins the day.

     This "fact dust ploy" would perhaps not be so insidious, were its effect just local, but like bio and nuclear, "fact dust" is an indiscriminate weapon. Most likely, today neither Trump, nor AOC, nor Mary on Main Street, have any fact based insight about global warming, abortion, tariffs, or damn near anything that will impact their collective lives.  They hear only rhetoric and they speak only rhetoric.

Thanks...... we are now totally confused.  Can we recover?  Probably not!