@curtosis @rajivsethi That's certainly true. But it doesn't strike me as remotely new. It's not new that people on the right (and the supposed center left) think that the Federal government is some kind of bloated jobs program, for example, when Federal employment has been capped for decades. 1/

@curtosis @rajivsethi On the one hand, that's surely the result of misinformation. People are badly misinformed. But it's not a new, social media kind of misinformation. It's politics we take as ordinary. As Williams points out, often the most destructive misinformation comes not from fringes, but from "mainstream", often liberal sources. 2/

@curtosis @rajivsethi (Famously, the "liberal" press for years took the claim "cutting the deficit is virtuous and desirable" as a fact demanding no justification by "objective" commentators, even though it is in fact a circumstance specific and high contextual question. To say that has been consequential in our politics is to understate the case.) 3/

@curtosis @rajivsethi One might respond by saying all of that was bad too, someone should have adjudicated lies and misstatements by prestigious economists and Obama Administration officials as much as they should today's conspiracy nuts, we need a bold new regime of information hygiene far beyond what has prevailed historically. 4/

@curtosis @rajivsethi But absent that, it strikes me as special pleading. Both of our major political formations rely on lies, exaggeration, and misinformation to help form their coalitions. My fave Bernie frequently parrots a line about the fraction of Americans living paycheck to paycheck that's probably false. 5/

@curtosis @rajivsethi If we're going to take on misinformation, stories too good to fact check that serve to cement political tribes, we need a pretty bold plan. Taking the status quo as of 2012 as "decent" and eliminating the sorts of disinformation that have emerged since seems less like referreeing a genuinely informative marketplace of ideas and more like taking sides. /fin