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Pessimistic technology reporter Kevin Roose has a piece in Tuesday’s New York Times with the disconcerting yet accurately representative headline, “How the Biden Administration Can Help Solve Our Reality Crisis.” Pegged to the twin anxieties over right-wing conspiracy theories and violence, Roose’s article contains one of the most blink-inducing paragraphs I have ever encountered in a respected journal:

Several experts I spoke with recommended that the Biden administration put together a cross-agency task force to tackle disinformation and domestic extremism, which would be led by something like a “reality czar.”

Cue scores of snorting noises on Twitter about our new “Ministry of Truth.”

“It sounds a little dystopian, I’ll grant,” Roose concedes. “But let’s hear them out.”

OK, let’s. Harvard’s Joan Donovan, research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, joins the recent political-class chorus calling for a “truth commission,” and pushes for the feds to have access to Facebook/Twitter/YouTube algorithms: “We must open the hood on social media so that civil rights lawyers and real watchdog organizations can investigate human rights abuses enabled or amplified by technology.”

Stanford Internet Observatory disinformation researcher Renée DiResta advocates a centralized counter-conspiracy task force, because if federal agencies are doing that work separately, “you run the risk of missing connections, both in terms of the content and in terms of the tactics that are used to execute on the campaigns.” Various pols and pundits propose rewriting Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act while using anti-trust threats to tame Big Tech; counter-extremism specialist Micah Clark plumps for a “social stimulus,” and hate-group deprogrammer Christian Picciolini opts for the kitchen-sink approach: “We have to destroy the institutional systemic racism that creates this environment. We have to provide jobs. We have to have access to mental health care and education.”

These thought bubbles may sound like unintentional self-parody to libertarian ears, but they are common both among the people who just re-took power in Washington and the knowledge workers who are glad they did. “We’re going to have to figure out how we reign in our media environment so that you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) warned on Jan. 13. A day earlier, Politifact founder Bill Adair and Duke professor Philip Napoli argued that Biden “should announce a bipartisan commission to investigate the problem of misinformation and make recommendations about how to address it. The commission should take a broad approach and consider all possible solutions: incentives, voluntary industry reforms, education, regulations, and new laws.”

So merely as a matter of prevent defense, it’s worth taking these ideas both seriously and literally. Starting with a point so obvious that only journalists and academics could miss it: Proposed changes to government policy should always be visualized with the opposing team in charge of implementation. Imagine as the annointer of a Reality Czar not Joe Biden, but President Ted Cruz, or President Tucker Carlson. You people do remember that the White House was the scene of insane meetings like this all of two weeks ago, right?

There are also several structural problems with tasking government to encourage and adjudicate society’s net store of capital-T Truth. Politicians (such as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris) are incentivized to embellish their credentials, fictionalize their biographies, and misrepresent their records. Government agencies, given their druthers, would rather operate like the CIA—funding essentially guaranteed, details not available on request. As our resident Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filer C.J. Ciaramella frequently reminds us, it’s the norm for bureaucrats to “flout the spirit and, quite often, the letter of federal record law.” And the last time Joe Biden was in the White House, his boss left “a blueprint on how to suppress information and get away with it.”

Truth is but one of many interests grasping for the steering wheel on the ship of state, and its lobbyists are comparatively underpaid. Realpolitik, interest-group payouts, and paternalistic efforts to shape citizen behavior all warp the common use of language and fact.

There’s a reason why U.S. officials can’t gin up the courage to call the century-old Turkish genocide of more than 1 million Armenians a “genocide,” yet are currently characterizing China’s brutal, though non-mass-murderous, suppression of its Uighur minority with a G-word even while several human rights groups do not (see also: “states that sponsor terrorism“). The Food Pyramid and its antecedents have been many things, but revealed truth is not one of them. The Centers for Disease Control, name-checked in Roose’s article, changed its recommendations on masks based more on behavioral effects than science. War is a perpetual lie-making machine, and that includes the War on Drugs.

The messy reality of overlapping bureaucracies and their conflicting interests may be one reason why pundit imagineers are tempted by “centralization” and the notion of a “czar.” It’s the eternal lure of a single magic wand. And about as childish.

“The knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use,” F.A. Hayek famously observed, “never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.” The more you centralize the processing and dissemination of knowledge, the greater the range and effect of potential error.

The centralization of U.S. intelligence under a single Department of Homeland Security after 9/11 was supposed to make us smarter and faster, and yet its single most visible impact on our lives is invasive and ineffective security screening at airports. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has throughout the COVID-19 pandemic kept “key virus data out of public sight,” the Associated Press reported Jan. 22, lest the little people get confused. In related news, Newsom kept outdoor playgrounds in sunny California closed for several months after a preponderance of studies had demonstrated that kids were not spreading it to one another outdoors. Science is a dispersed, contested, and constantly evolving process, not an on-off switch best entrusted to a single enlightened source.

I will let my colleagues Elizabeth Nolan Brown and Andrea O’Sullivan (twice), respectively, argue against gutting Section 230, using anti-trust against Big Tech, and giving the government access to social media algorithms, though props to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for demonstrating the dangers this week. But a final word about some kind of “truth commission.”

Here’s yet another political-class endorsement of that idea, from Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch last month:

Congress needs to create a Truth and Reconciliation process — a commission, perhaps, or even just an open forum — that will allow some or hopefully most to acknowledge Biden’s victory, state for there record that there was no election fraud in 2020, and maybe even apologize for saying otherwise.

Last year — before we had any idea the 45th president would incite an insurrection against the U.S. government — some of us called for a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address the lies and the anti-democratic policies of the Trump years. For that idea, we were vilified by some right-wingers who acted as if we were proposing a Nuremberg-war-crimes-trial kind of operation. But in fact a Truth and Reconciliation Commission — as successfully pulled off in South Africa and other strife-riven countries — is a chance for finding a common national story, for amnesty and a new beginning.

I’d be shocked if this happened, but I don’t know any other peaceful path forward.

Hyperbole aside, can you spot the flaw in this oft-used historical analogy? South Africa was a brutal racist police state. Most countries that have staged variants on truth commissions or qualified amnesties for past collaborators did so in large part because they were transitioning from authoritarianism to liberal democracy, and doing so requires immediate creative thinking about how to deal with past crimes and operate a current government without re-filling the prisons. It’s a damnably hard problem, not least because laws change dramatically in such transitions, prompting difficult questions about how to assign culpability to actions and collaborations that were perfectly legal in the Before Times.

Regardless of how darkly you characterize the Trump administration, that analogy just does not apply to the United States. Our laws, with almost no exception, are the same, and are in fact being used to prosecute hundreds of people connected with the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill ransacking. There are no pressing questions of lustration, of property-denationalizing, of teaching old civil service new codes of behavior.

Shorn of such urgencies, any proposed Truth Commission process looks more like a one-sided lecture, potentially backstopped by some government coercion aimed at those who are producing and consuming media in ways that the commissioners find distasteful. Not a very promising scenario for “reconciliation.”

Readers who’ve made it this far may be under the impression that I am blasé about the mainstream hold that conspiratorial twaddle has placed on ostensibly governing Republicans. In fact, I am not—there’s a mutually reinforcing rot in conservative politics and media, one whose main culprits are the politicians, journalists, and consumers who are either doing media literacy wrong, or making the cynical decision to pander to fantasies they themselves don’t believe in. It’s not a pretty picture, and blaming the left-leaning media is no excuse for any of it.

But what should said media do? Here is where my view diverges sharply. Journalists and media-theoreticians right now think the solution to Trumpy delusion is to deplatform even sitting U.S. senators, sic the feds on Fox News, break up Big Tech, reject “bothsidesism,” use the most maximally negative adjectives to describe Republicans, and reposition journalism as a tool for producing better democratic outcomes through applied moral clarity.

I think those approaches will backfire. Deliberately shrinking the public square is no way to persuade consumers on the edges of the debate. Injecting more moralizing into fact-gathering is unlikely to make the end product more factual. Giving the government more power over the rules and practice of free speech is, well, dystopian.

My recommendation to journalists and their cousins in government and academia will be neither popular nor satisfying, but here it is: Do your own jobs better. That’s it, that’s the memo. If government was efficient and helpful, if journalism was compelling and truthful, if the academe was relevant and unpredictable, their lectures would have far more resonance, and audience.

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A federal judge has ordered the state of Oregon to immediately begin offering COVID-19 vaccines to incarcerated people.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Stacie Beckerman issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday requiring Oregon to include all state prison inmates in Phase 1A, Group 2, of Oregon’s vaccination plan, which puts them in the same tier as those living and working in congregate care facilities, such as nursing homes. Oregon’s misguided vaccination rollout prioritized correctional staff and prison employees, but not inmates. Seven inmates at Oregon correctional facilities filed motions in federal court on January 21, as part of a larger class action lawsuit filed last April, seeking to compel the state to offer vaccines to all inmates.

Under current Supreme Court precedent, the Eighth Amendment guarantees access to basic health care and hygiene, but they must show “deliberate indifference” by staff to prevail in a civil rights lawsuit challenging prison conditions. Beckerman ruled that the incarcerated plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claims that being passed over for vaccines amounted to such indifference.

“The narrow question before the Court is whether prioritizing those living and working in congregate care facilities and those working in correctional settings to receive the vaccine, but denying the same priority for those living in correctional settings, demonstrates deliberate indifference to the health and safety of those relying on the state’s care,” Beckerman wrote in her ruling.

“Our constitutional rights are not suspended during a crisis,” Beckerman continued. “On the contrary, during difficult times we must remain the most vigilant to protect the constitutional rights of the powerless. Even when faced with limited resources, the state must fulfill its duty of protecting those in its custody.”

So far, 42 incarcerated people in Oregon have died from COVID-19, and more than 3,000 have been infected.

“This will save an incredible amount of lives,” Juan Chavez, an Oregon Justice Resource Center attorney who is representing the seven inmates, told The Oregonian.

Last week, The Oregonian reported on “the dire situation in Oregon’s prisons, where COVID cases have spiked dramatically, prisoners are afraid and frustrated.”

Prison and jails across the country, under pressure from an unusual alliance of prison guard unions and civil liberties groups, took unprecedented steps to reduce their populations, leading to a significant drop in the total incarcerated population. But those measures still did not go far enough to stop prisons and jails from becoming some of the biggest COVID hotspots in the U.S.

According to The Marshall Project, at least 366,121 people in prison nationwide had tested positive for the illness as of January 26, and 2,314 had died.

The Oregon Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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The war on COVID-19 has a lot in common with the war on drugs. Just as it is unrealistic to believe we can ever achieve a drug-free society, it is unrealistic to believe we can achieve a COVID-free society. While case numbers seem to be ebbing right now, and vaccinations are revving up, the risk remains that new, more virulent and contagious strains will emerge, resistant to the vaccines and to the immunity derived from having already been infected. Humans are social animals, and as people resume the in-person interactions they psychologically need and crave, new outbreaks are prone to occur.

This pandemic has a way to go before it runs its course. Even then, we can expect COVID-19 to remain a part of life for the foreseeable future.

It is time to embrace a strategy long advocated by reformers who deal with risky substance use and addiction: harm reduction. Harm reduction is nonjudgmental. It focuses on reducing the harm associated with the use of certain drugs and away from an abstinence-based approach that so often fails. Harm reduction is not a difficult concept for medical practitioners to grasp. When doctors prescribe medications to overweight, borderline diabetic, hypertensive patients who are unable or unwilling to make the necessary lifestyle adjustments to correct their health problems, they are practicing harm reduction.

In the case of substance use, harm reduction uses methods such as needle exchange or syringe services programs, safe consumptions sites, anonymous drug testing for contaminants and potency, and medication-assisted treatment for dependency or addiction with drugs such as methadone, buprenorphine, or even pharmaceutical-grade heroin to prevent withdrawal and stabilize life.

It is unrealistic to believe COVID-19 can be eradicated. Only one virus that infects humans has ever been eradicated––smallpox––and that took 200 years. The likelihood is that COVID-19 will become endemic, making oscillating or seasonal appearances. Dealing with this reality via oscillating lockdowns is unsustainable. 

We have already seen some of the harms resulting from the abstinence-based approach to the pandemic. These harms are not only economic, though poverty is a social determinant of health. Children are losing out on developing critical social and cognitive skills due to school closures, and poor children in inner cities have been hit the hardest. Children and adults are experiencing mental health deterioration. Suicides are increasing, as are drug overdoses. Many illnesses are going undiagnosed that will lead to increases in late-stage cancer and other medical problems in coming years. Income disparities are widening. Pockets of rebellion against pandemic policies are multiplying and respect for public health and governmental institutions is fading. 

We need to move away from an abstinence-based approach and adopt measures that allow us to return to as much of a normal life as possible.

A key harm reduction tactic is vaccination. Even as new variants develop, the immunity derived from vaccination or from previous infection means that a recurrent COVID-19 infection is much less likely to be severe or require hospitalization. Vaccination also reduces spread by moving the population toward herd immunity. As vaccinations increase, it becomes reasonable for people to resume dinner parties, home gatherings, and other social activities providing all involved have been immunized—either with a vaccine or by having survived infection. 

Coexisting with the virus means mask-wearing will still make sense in dense crowds with unknown people who might be carrying the virus. And we should keep our distance from vulnerable friends or family members when outbreaks occur. It also means frequent hand-washing. This might be a good time to abandon the handshake for good. 

A centrally planned, one-size-fits-all approach will be inequitable and ineffective. Government should provide updated and accurate information so that individuals and private organizations can devise their own best practices. Restaurants, theaters, shops, and other places of business should have leeway to develop their own evidence-based safety measures, free of micromanagement from governmental authorities. The consuming public will reward or punish these establishments based on results. The same goes for protecting the most vulnerable, such as those in nursing homes. Public health agencies should provide useful guidance but should minimize micromanagement. 

As hospital wards and intensive care units begin to decompress and the number of newly confirmed cases heads down, this is a good time to think about how to live in a world in which COVID-19 is endemic—one in which viral flare-ups are inevitable. If we look at the future through the lens of harm reduction then hopefully these flare-ups will mean just a temporary inconvenience from a flu-like or cold-like illness for the overwhelming majority of us.

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The House Republican Conference is meeting today to consider complaints against Rep. Liz Cheney (R–Wyo.), the third-ranking Republican in the House, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.), a freshman elected in November. Cheney’s sin is that she was one of 10 Republicans who voted in favor of impeaching Donald Trump for his conduct on the day of the January 6 Capitol riot. Greene’s sin is that she is a loony conspiracy theorist who has endorsed nearly every crazy idea circulating among right-wing agitators, depicting her political opponents as traitors, child abusers, Nazi collaborators, and murderers.

Cheney’s pro-Trump colleagues want her to lose her position as chair of the House Republican Conference. Democrats think Greene “should be removed from her committee assignments in light of conduct she has exhibited.” The New York Times says the debate about which of them should be punished and how is “a proxy battle for the [Republican] party’s future.” If so, it is not a battle over ideology or policy; it is a battle over which should count for more in the Republican Party: blind obeisance to Trump or a basic respect for reality.

Among other things, Greene has backed Trump’s wild claims of massive election fraud, saying the results in Georgia should be “decertified”; embraced the QAnon and Pizzagate fantasies; linked Hillary Clinton to pedophilia and human sacrifice; charged Clinton and her husband with killing John F. Kennedy Jr.; described Barack Obama as a secret Muslim who commissioned the murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich; suggested that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) and other leading Democrats should be executed for treason; peddled an explanation for a California wildfire involving space lasers, the Rothschilds, and Gov. Jerry Brown; called Jewish billionaire George Soros “a piece of crap who turned in his own people over to the Nazis” and “a Nazi” who is “trying to continue what was not finished”; argued that the Parkland and Sandy Hook school shootings were “false flag” operations aimed at promoting gun control; claimed there was “never any evidence” that a plane crashed into the Pentagon during the 9/11 attacks; and declared that anyone who is an observant Muslim “does not belong in our government.”

This week Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) castigated Greene without naming her. “Somebody who’s suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.’s airplane is not living in reality,” McConnell said in a statement to The Hill. “This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party.”

McConnell, who last month said Trump “provoked” the Capitol riot with “lies” about the election but nevertheless voted against trying his impeachment in the Senate, warned that “loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country.” Sen. Mitt Romney (R–Utah), a longtime Trump critic, says the GOP has no place for “kooks” like Greene. Even House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.), a Trump loyalist who is trying to decide what should be done about Greene, concedes that some of her comments are “deeply disturbing.”

Greene, who apparently recognized herself as a purveyor of “loony lies and conspiracy theories” even though McConnell did not name her, rejected his criticism. “The real cancer for the Republican Party is weak Republicans who only know how to lose gracefully,” she tweeted on Monday. “This is why we are losing our country.”

After news outlets exposed her outré views, Greene dismissed the evidence as “a few social media posts before I ran for Congress.” She said many other people had managed her accounts and “some did not represent my views.” By Greene’s account, then, she let other people say some of that crazy stuff while speaking on her behalf, which hardly reflects well on her judgment. But unless she also hired an unhinged Greene impersonator to do interviews and appear in online videos, that excuse gets her only so far.

Trump, whose only criterion for liking people seems to be their loyalty to him, remains a fan. “I had a GREAT call with my all time favorite POTUS, President Trump!” Greene tweeted on Saturday. “I’m so grateful for his support and more importantly the people of this country are absolutely 100% loyal to him because he is 100% loyal to the people and America First.”

Greene sees all the criticism of her as a validation. “The DC Swamp and the Fake News Media are attacking me because I am not one of them,” she tweeted on Monday. “I am one of you.” For Republicans, that’s a problem.

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