Information Wars

[Kirkhill]

A lot of electrons buzzing around devoted to information wars, misinformation, disinformation and such. Loads of people concerned about the truth and where to find it. The concern seems to afflict politicians and journalists and other clerical types - men of the cloth and Philadelphia lawyers. They are dead keen of sifting out the truth and nothing but the truth to ensure that the ignorant won't be led from the fold.

https://grc.ca/en/gazette/rcmp-steps-fight-against-disinformation

Online disinformation - Canada.ca

www.canada.ca

2022 Misinformation and Disinformation Study

www.security.org

PRESS RELEASE: UN launches recommendations for urgent action to curb harm from spread of mis and disinformation and hate speech. Global Principles for Information Integrity address risks posed by advances in AI | Nations Unies

United Nations, New York, 24 June 2024 – The world must respond to the harm caused by the spread of online hate and lies while robustly upholding human rights, United Nations Secretary- General António Guterres said today at the launch of the United Nations Global Principles for Information...

www.un.org

....

I propose an alternate solution.

Accustom people to the world of the lie. Get them used to the fact that words don't mean much.

And a great place to start is to reintroduce the art of bragging. This art was common in the back country of the US, and still is. It was also common in Northern England and Southern Scotland where it descended from Saxon and Viking traditions.

Some examples:

Brag

“I was born full-growed with nine rows of jaw teeth and holes bored for more. They was spurs on my feet and a rawhide quirt in my hand. I come out a-riding a panther and a-roping Longhorn whales. I’ve rode everything with hair on it and I’ve rode a few things that was too tough to grow any hair. I’ve rode bull moose on the prod, she-grizzlies, and long bolts of lightning. Mountain lions are my playmates. When I feel cold and lonesome, I sleeps in a den of rattlesnakes. The Grand Canyon ain’t nothing but my bean hole.”

Counter-Brag

“Raised in the backwoods, suckled by a polar bear, ten rows of jaw teeth, a double coat of hair, steel ribs, wire intestine and a barbed-wire tail, and I don’t give a dang where I drag it. Whoop- ee-whee-a-ha!”

The most famous frontier braggart was Davy Crockett, an Appalachian backwoodsman who rose to the Tennessee legislature and the US Congress, died at the Alamo, and passed into legend as the King of the Wild Frontier. Here he is in full flight: “I am a real ringtailed roarer of a jawbreaker, from the thunder and lightning country down east. I make my breakfast on stewed Yankee and pork steak, and, by way of digestion, rinse them down with spike nails and Epsom salts […] I can out-eat, out-drink, out-work, out-grin, out-snort, out-run, out-lift, out-sneeze, out-sleep and out-lie anything in the shape of a man or a beast, from Maine to Louisiana.”

One of his speeches before the US Congress began, “Mr Speaker, who-who-woop! Bow-wow- wow! I’ve had a speech in soak this six months, and it has swelled me like a drowned horse. If I don’t deliver it I shall burst and smash the windows. The gentleman from Massachusetts talks of summing up the merits of the question, but I’ll sum up my own. In one word I’m a screamer, and have got the roughest racking horse, the prettiest sister, the surest rifle and the ugliest dog in the district […] I can walk like an ox, run like a fox, swim like an eel, yell like an Indian, make love like a mad bull…”

Brag

“Sired by a hurricane, dam’d by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the smallpox on my mother’s side! […] I take nineteen alligators and a bar’l of whiskey for breakfast when I’m in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I’m ailing.”

Counter-Brag

“When I’m playful I use the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales! I scratch my head with the lightning and purr myself to sleep with the thunder! […] The massacre of isolated communities is the pastime of my idle moments, the destruction of nationalities the serious business of my life!”

the American journalist and humourist PJ O’Rourke revived and modernised the form during a trip to Europe, a continent that he found dull, tired, annoying and insufferably pompous. The last straw came over dinner in London, when for the umpteenth time someone pointed out that America had never been invaded. “I’d like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who’d have the guts to try,” he said, in the course of a ranting brag. “We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended from a stock market crash on our mother’s side. You take your Germany, France and Spain, roll them all together and it wouldn’t give us room to park our cars. We’re the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized, new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap d’Antibes […] We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, fuck longer and buy more things than you know the names of […] We eat little countries like this for breakfast and shit them out before lunch.”

A Short History on American Bragging

From the Mississippi Delta to Trump Tower, Richard Grant writes a history of American grandstanding, eloquence and excess

www.port-magazine.com

Hyperbole is an artform.

A weak attempt by some archaeologists

 

[Kirkhill]

The art of the wind-up

wind-up - English Vocabulary - English - The Free Dictionary Language Forums

 

[RangerRay]

So politicians telling blatant lies to their gullible supporters about disaster response in North Carolina and Florida to make their opponents look bad is a-ok? Sounds like a dangerous recipe to me…

 

[GR66]

So politicians telling blatant lies to their gullible supporters about disaster response in North Carolina and Florida to make their opponents look bad is a-ok? Sounds like a dangerous recipe to me…

I guess it goes to show that "useful idiots" are desired tools on both end of the political spectrum.