In 1997, the Dickey Amendment was inserted into an appropriations bill. It prohibited the use of funds by the Centers for Disease Control to “advocate or promote gun control.” It was paired with a $2.6 million budget cut to the CDC: the exact amount used by that agency for firearm research the year before. The implication was clear: the CDC needs to stay away from research into the effect of guns on public health.

Because of this, we don’t have evidence of effective ways to curb gun violence. We can speculate that having fewer guns will result in a reduction in gun-related injuries and deaths. But we can also speculate that having MORE guns would act as a deterrent to gun violence. There’s simply no research from a reputable, unbiased source to answer the question, so opposing opinions and hypotheses can coexist.

But this post isn’t about gun violence. We could solve that problem if we wanted to.

In our world of overwhelming information abundance, what makes your research study better than my Google search? There’s lots of information out there. A lot of it is contradictory. Who’s to say what we can believe anymore? Butter used to be good for you. Then it was bad. Now it’s good again (or, at least, better than margarine). The same is true with eggs. Or a glass of wine. We used to drain the swamps. Now we protect the wetlands. We switched from paper grocery bags to plastic because we were destroying the rainforests. Then, we switched to reusable bags because the plastic trash was destroying the environment. Now, we’re going back to paper because people aren’t reusing the reusable bags enough to justify making them. How do we know what to believe anymore?

When I was in the classroom, I taught my students to look for signs of credibility. Who is saying this thing you’re reading online? What are their credentials? What are their motivations for taking the position they have? What evidence can you find to help you decide whether to give more credibility to one source over another? Those are still useful skills. But we’re not talking about two sources anymore. We’re looking at 200. And the credibility usually comes from how high they appear in the search results. Google’s search algorithm ranks them for us. We all trust that Google is looking out for our best interests, right? Why wouldn’t the most relevant and most credible results be at the top of the list?

Now, what if you’re just some grumpy old tech guy who hasn’t been in the classroom for 25 years? You’re writing away on some blog on a dusty corner of the Internet. There’s no PhD. There’s no list of published research articles or books. There’s no prestigious institution or successful company behind your name. There’s no giant company’s deep-pocketed marketing and lobbying machine. There’s no government agency or reputable industry group affiliation. What makes me credible at all? If you know me, or if you’ve been following along for the last 20 years, you might conclude that I occasionally know what I’m talking about. But if you don’t, I’m just some guy with a blog. I’m a drop in the ocean. I’m one voice in the crowd. It doesn’t really matter if I’m right or wrong or have a plan to save the world or a plan to destroy it. I don’t have a loud enough voice to really make a difference.

But If I did have a loud voice, and a lot of power, and a huge ego, more people would listen to me. They would pay attention to the stuff I’m saying, even if it doesn’t make any sense. If I convince them that I’m successful and rich and powerful, they’ll believe the things I tell them because they want to be successful and rich and powerful, and they think I’m going to tell them how to do it.

But if my ideas contradict the credible sources, I have a problem. If I say you shouldn’t brush your teeth, but the American Dental Association disagrees, people might believe the ADA and start thinking I’m a crackpot. If I say that immigrants are stealing our jobs and commiting violent crimes and leeching off the hard working American taxpayer, I have to make sure there’s no evidence to contradict me. If I want to push the idea that climate change isn’t real, I really need the scientific community to stop contradicting me with evidence of climate change. If I need to feed the hate and fear and divisiveness that elected me, I have to make sure we don’t have intentional efforts to increase acceptance, belonging, and the desire to take care of one another. In short, I have to discredit the credible if I want the incredible to be believable.

How would I go about doing that? I could start by trying to silence anyone who starts asking questions that I don’t like. I might restrict access to journalists who refuse to go along with my whims and give special access to those who blindly accept everything I say. I could intimidate and sue news outlets who allow their reporters to criticize me or question my actions, motives, or decisions. And at the same time, I can continue the endless barrage of the media, pushing the agenda that they’re against me because they’re jealous of how awesome I am.

But manipulating the media only goes so far. Sure, everyone knows we’re at war with Eastasia. We’ve always been at war with Eastasia. But who even pays attention to the news anymore? We need more control than that.

Maybe we can attack the protectors of accurate knowlege and scientific research. Sure, maybe you have a degree from an ivy league institution instead of my print-at-home diploma service. But does that mean you’re smarter than me or know more important stuff? If we can change the way schools get their authority to grant degrees, we can stop producing so many educated, perspicacious people who can intelligently challenge the story I’m tying to tell.

What’s that? You’re going to challenge me in court? Yeah, good luck with that. If your attorney tries to make your case against me, I’ll make sure their firm is banned from representing the govenment. The financial loss to your firm could be devestating. We do a lot of really questionable stuff, and we need a LOT of lawyers. But you’re not going to be one of them. There are consequences to opposing me. And if you do win your case, I’ll either keep appealing until I get a judge that I appointed, or I’ll just ignore the orders. We’ve already determined that I don’t really have to obey the law.

But really, this all starts with education. We have to make sure that our children are taught to believe the narrative we’re crafting. America has always been great. We can’t have any suggestions that our country hasn’t always been the greatest country in the world. And we need to make sure that public education continues to get worse while expanding the ability for parents to get public funding for private schools that teach the “values” and “truths” that we want them to learn. And while we’re at it, we might as well codify that disinformation into state education standards, like Oklahoma recently did. History is what we say it is.

As consumers of information, it’s a lot more difficult now. Finding the balance between viewpoints and trying to make sure that all sides are equally represented is nearly impossible when some viewpoints are being amplified while others are silenced. But even recognizing that it’s happening — that we’re not getting the whole story — is the first step.