America conducted many wars over the years, and I feel that all the were against ideologies and never war on the people. Operation Enduring Freedom is not a war on Afghanistani people, but the idea of terrorism. World War II was a war on Nazism and not a war on German citizens. We crossed some lines in the ‘fog of war’ that has caused serious damage to the innocent civilians, and that needs to be reconciled. This carnage of innocent citizens we seek to protect in the name of war should not be just ignored as ‘collateral damage.’
We have a new threat facing our nation now, and it’s not an external threat of terrorism or a threat from a foreign nation in the name of political idealogy. Our current threat is a serious one that can destroy us from within. The closest analogy to this threat is the disease of cancer. It’s easy to treat a bacterial infection because bacterial cells are different from human cells, and antibiotics can easily target them. Antiviral drugs do not deactivate or destroy the microbe (in this case, the virus) but act by inhibiting replication. In this way, they prevent the viral load from increasing to a point where it could cause pathogenesis, allowing the body's innate immune mechanisms to neutralize the virus. We do not have such luxury with cancer cells, as cancer cells are not external bodies but our own cells. These cancer cells are hard to target even for our own immune system. They evade and hide from our own bodies since these cancer cells originate from our existing tissue. Therefore, our body has a challenging time differentiating these cancer cells from normally dividing cells.
The more I research into the current disinformation campaign with rumors being spread by responsible, intelligent, and rational people, the more I see the similarities between cancers and disinformation campaigns. Disinformation campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, and now Parler have the highest engagement every day, just like rapid growth and uncontrolled cancer cell division. People who are ‘infected’ by rumors like ‘All democrats are Satan worshipping pedophiles’ are just normal, human beings unfortunately inflicted by the curse of disinformation.
Truth travels at a slow, glacial pace as it requires reason, justification, and validation. However, disinformation travels at the speed of light, as it seeks no reason, expects no justification, and elicits no validation. Powered by confirmation biases, fueled by echo chambers, and propagated by dishonorable leaders - these lies spread like wildfire and can consume innocent civilians and wreck our democracy itself.
We ignored the right-wing rumor mill as racist bigotry and were somehow hoping that Trump’s defeat would shut this down. Trump’s successful distortions on Russia Collusion, Impeachment, COVID19, Masks, and other disinformation campaigns have laid the foundation for the latest ‘Stop the Steal’ Campaign. We are now seeing billboards talking about ‘legal votes’ and messages by normal, rational citizens on ‘dead people, illegal ballots, and vote count frauds’ with absolutely no basis in facts.
We need to wage war on disinformation by taking on these active disinformation campaigns. We need to call them out when they lie. We need to engage with them and not ignore them. We need to argue with them on Fox News, OAN, NewsMax, Parler, Facebook, Twitter, and even Breitbart and QAnon sites if we have to. If we ignore them, the cancer of disinformation will continue spreading like wildfire, ultimately consuming our democracy itself.