The Establishment Calls For Reality Czar to Crush Dissent

(Michael McCaffrey) The mainstream media and ruling elite really hate conspiracy theories and misinformation – except when they don’t.

On February 2, which ironically enough is Groundhog Day here in the US, the New York Times published an article titled‘How The Biden Administration Can Help Solve Our Reality Crisis’.

It seems a very bad sign that America is now relying on a geriatric Washington insider whose own perception of reality has been called in to question numerous times to solve a "reality crisis".

In the article, writer Kevin Roose spoke with ‘experts’ who offered suggestions about how to unify Americans around “reality” by stamping out “conspiracy theories” and “misinformation”.

One of the suggestions was that Biden should create a “Reality Czar” to oversee the dismantling of “disinformation” and the surveillance of “conspiracy theorists”.

That sounds like a great idea – I mean, what could possibly go wrong? 

The problem with a 'reality czar' is that America is a post-reality nation. Our culture has gone so far to the extreme with regard to embracing subjective experience over objective reality that some blowhard bureaucrat is not going to be able to tip the scales back towards the rational.

And, of course, that is the point. The Biden administration doesn’t want to return America to objective reality, they want Americans to embrace the establishment’s reality – and those are two very different things.

The establishment reality is the neo-liberal, corporate controlled, military-industrial-complex reality that loathes being held to account for its continuous misdeeds and misinformation.

The establishment reality demands we accept the absurdly incomplete official story regarding the spate of assassinations in the ’60s (JFK, MLK, RFK) while refusing to declassify and un-redact the millions of government files on those topics it won’t let us see.

The establishment reality lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident and gave us the hell of the Vietnam War. 

The establishment reality lied to us about Iran-Contra and the death squads in Latin America. It also lied about its complicity in the drug trade while it manufactured a War on Drugs.

The establishment reality refused to declassify documents about 9/11 and to investigate the funding for that attack. It also unleashed George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s ‘Dark Side’, which included the War on Terror, torture, massive surveillance, Gitmo, rendition and the Patriot Act.

The establishment reality was the one that told us Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and gave us the Iraq War, and continues to give us the war in Yemen and the carnage in Libya and across the globe.

It is often said that daylight is the best disinfectant, but we are continuously kept in the dark, and the establishment, regardless of which party is in power, is a gangrenous limb whose lies and disinformation are much more toxic to America and the world than anything some QAnon clowns can conjure in their fever dreams. 

It is pretty rich that the New York Times is running this article calling for a reality czar and bemoaning disinformation, as it has long aided and abetted the establishment in its concealing of truth and distorting of objective reality. 

Whether it be Walter Duranty and his lies for Stalin, or Judith Miller and her lies for Bush, the Times has proven over and over again that it isn’t a news organisation, but a praetorian guard meant to protect the tyrants, oligarchs and aristocrats from the masses.

The establishment’s hatred of conspiracy theories is particularly amusing in light of what transpired over the past four years.

Am I the only one who remembers the Russiagate hysteria? Stories of dastardly Rooskies hacking into power grids and voting booths, and using microwave weapons to attack Americans have been commonplace in the Times and across the mainstream media, and yet those ‘conspiracy theories’ were not only accepted but embraced. 

Would the new Reality Czar hold the Times accountable for those idiotic stories? Would MSNBC be chastised for Rachel Maddow’s conspiratorial ramblings? Would CNN be reprimanded for its “mostly peaceful protests” disinformation?

Would the Reality Czar target the scientists and medical experts who publicly proclaimed that it was OK to gather in large groups during the pandemic to protest for Black Lives Matter but not to protest against lockdown?

How about those radical trans activists who distort and contort both science and reality?

Would the Reality Czar target the new White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki, especially considering her laughably ridiculous press conference from 2015, at which, with a straight face, she stated that the US had a “long-standing” policy against backing coups? 

Of course not.

Like a paranoid schizophrenic, our political and media elite is constantly trying to convince people that its own devious delusions are the one true reality.

The Reality Czar would not be required to actually quash misinformation and conspiracy theories – only the misinformation and conspiracy theories the establishment doesn’t like. 

The 'reality is that the ruling elite are pushing the notion of rampant right-wing domestic terrorists and the danger of conspiracy theories in an attempt to conceal their crimes and stifle dissent, not to help objective “reality” flourish. 

As Orwell told us, “Who controls the past, controls the future, who controls the present, controls the past.” The establishment wants to control the present, the past, the future and, most of all, you. And a Reality Czar is just the beginning.

Michael McCaffrey is a writer and cultural critic who lives in Los Angeles. His work can be read at RT, Counterpunch and at his website mpmacting.com/blog. He is also the host of the popular cinema podcast Looking California and Feeling Minnesota. Follow him on Twitter @MPMActingCo