The Disinformation Situation

“[T]he governments insistence on lying about everything connected with the war had begun to erode the social fabric of the U.S. Systematic lying creates what communications scientists call a disinformation situation, in which everybody eventually begins to distrust, demonize and diabolize everybody else...

[T]otally sane people will begin to behave with all the irrationality of hospitalized paranoids or schizophrenics - just because they have been lied to in a calculated and systematic way. This sort of disinformation matrix is so typical of many aspects of our society (e.g., advertising and organized religion, as well as government) that some psychiatrists, such as R.D. Laing, claim it is the principal cause of psychotic breakdowns. When the politics of lying becomes normal, paranoia and alienation become the normality of the day.”