Have you noticed the sea change in public perspectives on disinformation?

In recent years, disinformation supposedly has been a problem so severe that it required a concerted effort by government — with help from print and broadcast media, social media, and legions of fact-checkers — to disabuse our gullible public of falsehoods spread by the Right.

Suddenly, the tables have turned. We’re finding that disinformation is in fact a problem, but that most of it comes from elected or appointed government officials — the people we’re supposed to trust to tell the truth.

Some eye-opening revelations have emerged from recent House Republican actions to shine light into previously hidden dark corners. In other cases, it is simply the inevitable tendency for the truth to come out. Examples include:

1) Last Monday and Tuesday evening, Tucker Carlson dedicated his full hour prime-time Fox News broadcasts to showcasing videos from inside the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 riot — segments of 41,000 hours of video that had been collected by the government but withheld from public view. In the segments aired by Carlson, the Capitol trespassers were seen as generally respectful and orderly, the opposite of the raging, violent assault described by the J6 Committee.

Carlson’s selection of video was derided by critics as “one-sided.” It was. His objective — deftly achieved — was to reveal the other side of the story, the opposite of the one (and the only) side described by the J6 Committee.

The reaction from Democrats was as entertaining as the video. They went nuts. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer characterized the release of the tapes as “shameful” and demanded that Fox News take Carlson off the air. Interestingly, Schumer never challenged the authenticity of the tapes, just their release to the general public. Evidently, he and others think Americans should sit quietly, accept what they’re told, and not be permitted to see for themselves.

The airing of these videos — after two years of relentlessly biased showboating by the House J6 Committee — stands in stark contrast to the Biden administration’s insistence that the ugly riot that day somehow constituted an armed insurrection against the U.S. government.

2) Simultaneous to last week’s J6 drama has been the escalating debate over the origins of COVID-19, with evidence that information was manipulated to convince the public that the virus was not created in the CCP Wuhan virology lab. This is likely the tip of the iceberg, leading to more revelations about the backroom decision-making about vaccine mandates, lockdowns, mask requirements, school closings, etc.

3) We’re also learning more about our government’s improper influence over print, broadcast, and social media’s pre-election blackout of information about the infamous laptop and indications therein of Biden family influence peddling.

4) Superimposed on all of that, we are slipping into 2024 election season with its perennial over-the-top rhetoric. In recent speeches and public comments, the president has asserted that the “extremist” Supreme Court has eviscerated the 1965 Voting Rights Act and that “MAGA Republicans” are actively working to suppress minority votes. In others, he tells of secret maneuvering by Republicans to destroy Social Security and Medicare. All are flagrantly false.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Controversial issues have two sides (otherwise, they wouldn’t be controversial). Republicans and Democrats have distinctly different views on how to attack these issues. Honest conversations about those differences would be far more productive than the political blizzard of disinformation.

Here is a far more constructive — and truthful — perspective on the above examples:

J6 was a violent riot. It hurt people and property, some grievously. It’s a black eye for the nation and for the political actors who fomented it. The congressional January 6 Committee could serve the public interest by analyzing what happened and working to prevent it from happening again — its precise charter — without pushing the absurd notion that it was the single greatest threat to American democracy since the Civil War.

On COVID, Americans understand the immense challenges that confronted the current and previous administration with the emergence of a catastrophic pandemic. American healthcare was stretched to the breaking point and policy decisions had to be made on the fly. We get that. But pretending that we got everything right just dodges the opportunity to learn what must be learned to be able to handle the next pandemic.

The president can convince black and brown voters that he is committed to racial justice without pretending that his political opponents are reincarnations of Bull Connor and the Jim Crow era of long ago.

America would be far better off with a candid, honest understanding of competing views between Left and Right. That might even be good politics.