At Last! The Science of Political Bullshit Revealed!

We Knew It Was Going On, But Not What To Call It!

I recently read an article by feature writer Georgina Kenyon on the BBC News website from 2016, about “Robert Proctor, a science historian from Stanford University, who started delving into the practices of tobacco firms and how they had spread confusion about whether smoking caused cancer.” (BBC)

His byline; “Agnotology is the study of willful acts to spread confusion and deceit, usually to sell a product or win favour.”

Proctor basically says ignorance can spread because if many just do not understand something, special interest, commercial or political groups can feed that ignorance and manipulate it by sowing more confusion.

He began his research with the tobaccos companies hiding cancer, but he was also right about a much earlier case of it. Frankly, history takes some of the worst beatings in the agnotology arena.

This obscure example of how ridiculous it can get comes from former wife-cheating-impeahcment-mongering-disbarred and ejected House Speaker Newt ‘fuck democracy’ Gingrich (too much?) (naahh.), who also fancies himself an expert historian.

He said in 2012 in New Hampshire:

"I think Jefferson or George Washington would have rather strongly discouraged you from growing marijuana and their techniques with dealing with it would have been rather more violent than our current government,"

Newt not only got the 18th Century wrong, but the 1930s as well.

To believe that- and some people did- it can only be because you don’t know that the word marijuana was not in use during Washington’s time, that it is the flowers of the cannabis plant -hemp- which was not only legal for all of history before the 20th Century, but is our most traditional source of textiles from the stalks, paper from the pulp, even fuel oil from the seeds, and yes, medicine.

Historically, smoking it was mostly limited to hashish in the East and sailors, stretching their tobacco rations with ‘hemp tobacco’. After stripping the seeds, the flowers would be used to make a medicine tea, or boiled down to essentially hash oil, and mixed with morphine and alcohol in ‘snake oil’ elixirs.

Everyone grew acres of hemp. Ship’s sails, riggings and ropes were made of it. Later, parachutes. Cothes. Table cloths. Napkins. The first draft of the Constitution was printed on hemp paper. There was no way in Washington’s time that the most useful non-food crop in the world was going to be banned.

So, Newt was wro- er, ‘unexposed to facts’ on every level of his claim.

Then, why spread such utter nonsense?

Well again, we come to Proctor, even if we’re a bit early for him.

Following his lead from tobacco backwards, it was agnotology all along. This time, the petroleum and opium industries.

Newt’s fighting a sequel war, in light of the new ‘attack’. That is, widespread legalization of cannabis and the return of hemp products to the marketplace.

Synthetic textiles and opiate derivatives, with their lucrative patents, were the corporate choice in the 1930s, and permanently public-domain cannabis/hemp had to go. So, as newspaper mogul Randolph Hearst began calling cannabis flower ‘marijuana’ in his papers, and ascribing it to horrific black on white crime, the government let Harry Anslinger, the previous champion of prohibition, now looking for something to do, become the first drug czar.

Ignorance of the plant and its history was used to add false information that would convince people that there was a threat to them physically when the only threat was financially to the synthetic patent holders.

They fulfilled Proctor’s definition to a tee, in 1937, banning ‘marijuana’ via the Stamp Act.

Until it was overturned in 1970 when LSD guru Timothy Leary (yes, that Timothy Leary) was arrested for it, and fought it to the Supreme Court, where it was found to be entrapment. (You had to have the stamp to get the pot but you had to have the pot to get the stamp but…)

But, Nixon picked right up on the scent, making ‘marijuana’ a Schedule 1 drug, alongside heroin, for Christ’s sake, and then promoted the myth that pot was a gateway drug to heroin, which was a gateway to violence and crime which was because of those damn hippies where’s my shotgun godammit.

But, in all fairness, ‘agnotology’ has never been as visibly present as it is now.

MAGA politicians, pundits and commenters have been demonstrating this ever since the Proctor article was written.

For example, Trump said that the Presidential Records Act allows him to keep anything he wants. It most certainly does not.

But nationwide, it sometimes feels to me like only 67 people have read the PRA, and I’m three of them. This sheer blind ignorance of the actual law has left MAGA supporters firmly convinced of Trump’s lies.

Ignorance by lack of exposure, amplified by false information given to curry political favor among supporters.

Just like Robert Proctor said.

Now, I know, we all thought the new danger paradigm was Dunning-Kruger, evidenced by the conga line of idiots and miscreants dancing into Trump’s cabinet, and that is a genuine concern. I mean, Gabbard, Nunes, gimme a break!

But, it turns out, it’s also Proctor’s ‘agnotology’.

Because it’s apparent that this is the word and definition we’ve been looking for to describe what the Republican Party, and especially Trump, have been doing these past 9 years.

It’s always, only, been about getting enough stupid and skeptical people to blur the picture and put them in office across the board.

And, they pulled it off by just under 250,000 votes.

Saying the most inane, absurd and completely ridiculous things has become the standard operating procedure for right wing TV (I’m looking at you, Tuckums.)

So, it has to be noted that virtually every lie or disinformation being told in public by a conservative politician or right wing pundit has been absolutely intentional and cognizant. They knew it was a lie and that was the point.

Except RFK Jr., who really doesn’t know. I swear….

And virtually every voter who believed it did so in the light of ignorance of the truth, either through lack of exposure or lack of understanding.

With the stupidest, most dishonest people imagined by the stupidest, most dishonest person on Earth running the world’s biggest government, it would seem that Proctor’s assessments weren’t just prescient, but vital.

This is a bridge we must simply cross as soon as possible. There aren’t two sides to everything. Some things are and that’s that. The Constitution and the US legal code are such.

Verified science is such. Documented history is such.

Between Proctor and Dunning-Kruger, they have psychologically nailed our predicament.

Propaganda is one thing, but this is more than just trying to win. This is the cultivation of a subjugated society, and ignorance is their gateway.

Kakistocracy only takes hold when these factors appear, and kleptocracy only takes hold when these tactics are successful.

But, we’re about to have both.

Kaki-klepto!

But, don’t forget pluto- no, not the dog, and, no, not the once-planet either.

Pluto, as in plutocracy.

Yes, the rich, no, would you forget about the dog?

Okay well, um, I guess we could all use a good ‘ol fashioned Disney song right about now, anyway, right? Right?

(I didn’t get ‘right’ from that guy in the back) (Um, uh, right?)

Okay, here we go!

(Sung to the tune of “super-cali-fragilist- oh, you get the idea”)

Pluto-klepto-kaki-nutso-auto-cratic-na-tion.

Even though we all know it was not caused by in-fla-tion.

If we fail to stop it then we’ll fall into dam-na-tion.

Pluto-klepto-kaki-nutso-auto-cratic-na-tion.

Thank you. We’ll be here all week. Try the veal!

(This brief musical respite from Orwellian dystopia was brought to you by the Disney Company, and by Charmin, cuz, trust me, you’re gonna need it.)

c.2024 Cousin B