Despite the ‘Experts,’ Americans See Biden’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ for What It Is

Opposition to President Biden’s proposed Disinformation Governance Board is mushrooming. Repeated assurances that its head, Nina Jankowicz, is an “expert” haven’t quelled the outrage, demonstrating Americans’ ability to discern the truth for themselves.The word “expert” has been used to squelch speech for years, but it’s a meaningless title that one can self-apply, similar to declaring yourself an “environmentalist,” a “pastor,” or an “activist.”In my early days in news radio, we wouldn’t book a congressman to debate a senator because of the disparity in their offices. Today, flimsy titles abound and it seems that almost anyone can be taken at face value as a “strategist” or “expert.”They’ll appear on equal footing with governors or scientists with six degrees. Ms. Jankowicz may be a “disinformation fellow” at the left-wing Woodrow Wilson Center and may have written a couple of books, but her background wouldn’t land her a job as assistant editor at a local paper.Yet Mr. Biden would presume to make her ombudsman for the nation with God’s ability to discern absolute truth. If you’re this White House, fearful of Elon Musk transforming Twitter into a platform of free speech, you can elevate only someone with such a resume to “disinformation tsar” by pulling a fast one.The word “expert” does that heavy lifting, but when pressed on the matter, the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, glued on an adjective, declaring Ms. Jankowicz “a renowned expert.”When did this transformation occur? Was there a moment in time when Ms. Jankowicz was a civilian and a ceremony christened her “expert,” or was she granted the power over speech by divine right?Even allowing that Ms. Jankowicz has good intentions — that asphalt of the road to hell — she’s only human and has branded a list of true stories “disinformation” throughout her career.At the top of the pile is the New York Post’s 2020 exposé on the laptop of Hunter Biden, the president’s son. It’s now accepted as genuine, but at the time Mrs. Jankowicz dismissed it as fake.“We should view it as a Trump campaign product,” she told the Associated Press, which listed her among “experts” raising “red flags,” but who were themselves spreading disinformation.The laptop story threatened to sink the campaign of the president Ms. Jankowicz now serves, but once the press mints you an “expert,” you’re immune from even the appearance of impropriety.On another occasion, Ms. Jankowicz tweeted that memes — pictures from pop culture cast in a political light — “malign,” as if the likes of Kermit the Frog sipping tea needed censoring and mocking hasn’t been central to our discourse since Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.”Ms. Jankowicz also tweeted support for the debunked Steele Dossier, which has been exposed as second-hand rumors and as a product of disinformation from Senator Clinton’s campaign.The late Christopher Hitchens was steeped in George Orwell and warned of the difficulty interpreting the author’s novels, but the parallel to the Ministry of Truth in the dystopian world of “1984” is too striking to miss.Minitrue didn’t just oversee all entertainment and information for the novel’s English Socialist dictatorship — INGSOC, in Orwellian jargon. Orwell’s “experts” decided what terms could be used and which would be sent down the “memory hole.”It’s into that chute the press threw the Hunter Biden laptop story and others that turned out to be true.President Lincoln declared, “No man is good enough to govern another man without that other man’s consent,” and the same can be said of one man — or woman — governing another’s speech, which is why the First Amendment declares that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.DHS was created by Congress and cannot exercise powers outside the United States Constitution, no matter what the experts say. In order for our democracy to function, each American is the “expert” in his own interests.

Despite the ‘Experts,’ Americans See Biden’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ for What It Is

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