NY Mag: Democrats Fool Each Other with 'Disinformation' Excuses

Democrats invented the threat of “disinformation” to cope with the psychological pain of their 2016 defeat by Donald Trump, says a liberal New York magazine.“Disinformation’ was the liberal Establishment’s traumatic reaction to the psychic wound of 2016,” Sam Adler-Bell wrote in New York Magazine‘s “Intelligencer” column.But that “disinformation” diagnosis is also a problem for Democrats because it prevents them from recognizing how their political views are seen by ordinary Americans, he wrote on May 20.One problem with “Liberals’ fixation on ‘disinformation’ is that it allows them to lie to themselves” about public support for their policies, he wrote:How could a man who appeared to them so transparently abhorrent and clownish be welcomed by others as a savior — or at least as a tolerable alternative to the status quo? The rise of Trump called not for new politics but new technocrats..@SamAdlerBell writes on why the swift death of the White House’s disinformation board is probably a good thing https://t.co/0Eyd1IhQsk— Intelligencer (@intelligencer) May 20, 2022If the problem is “disinformation,” then the cure is more Harvard graduates, more public re-education, and more government, such as the so-called “Disinformation Board” created (and then canceled) by the Department of Homeland Security.“By doubling down on elite technocracy — and condescension toward the uneducated rubes suffering from false consciousness — liberals have tended to exacerbate the sources of populist hostility,” he wrote.Suitably, the critique of the disinformation diagnosis article was posted just as many other media outlets pushed their self-serving diagnosis about the public worries about migration.Migration is the political issue that put Trump in the White House, but establishment media outlets have consistently refused to reckon with the public’s worry about the civic and economic impacts of mass migration.Instead of that long-overdue reckoning, the public’s rational concerns are being diagnosed — and smeared — as a racist conspiracy theory, dubbed “Replacement Theory.” For example, a New York Times reporter wrote on May 16:[Rep. Elise] Stefanik [R-NY] is under scrutiny for campaign advertisements she has circulated that play on themes of the white supremacist “great replacement” theory.