Is The Frenzy over Fake News Just Liberal-Elite Contempt?

This article on Vox, by Emmett Rensin on April 21, 2016, argues that liberal elites have become a parody of contempt again working-class citizens who JUST DON’T KNOW ENOUGH.

There is a smug style in American liberalism. It has been growing these past decades. It is a way of conducting politics, predicated on the belief that American life is not divided by moral difference or policy divergence — not really — but by the failure of half the country to know what’s good for them.

In 2016, the smug style has found expression in media and in policy, in the attitudes of liberals both visible and private, providing a foundational set of assumptions above which a great number of liberals comport their understanding of the world.

The trouble is that stupid hicks don’t know what’s good for them. They’re getting conned by right-wingers and tent revivalists until they believe all the lies that’ve made them so wrong. They don’t know any better. That’s why they’re voting against their own self-interest.

The recent election results would seem to put an exclamation on this notion! Clearly, at least half of the country had no idea that the other half was going to rise up and elect a man who doesn’t know much about the world. Doh!

To me, the article does hint at the difficulty of countering the fake-news problem, the dishonesty in public discourse problem. It will NOT be enough to simply tell the truth.