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Who should you trust?
Welcome to 2025, the year in which misinformation, disinformation, and general shit housery is about to go orbital. Trump’s election win was a proceeded by a cavalcade of misinformation weaponised by Elon Musk’s echo chamber on Twitter, which in turn was amplified by the right wing media ecosystem that projected Trump as the saviour of the nation. All of this happened in 2016, and there is a strong argument we all should have known better, yet the reality is people would prefer to believe the grand lies of those who promise elusive change over the hard reality of those who speak a version of the truth. Lies sell better because they taste sweeter, and much like junk food the odd lie is not going to harm you but a consistent diet will damage and potentially kill. Who you choose to trust becomes a matter of what diet you wish to consume, both literal and metaphorical. Its not simply a matter of Trump and Musk versus the liberals, it is a complex overlapping series of rhetorical platforms that becomes exhausting to navigate.
I make no pretensions about my politics. I am socially as liberal as they come, broadly in favour of state run utilities and social security, yet also see the place of free enterprise in a regulated environment. Whom I trust for news and opinion has shifted since 2016, especially as the mainstream media is too afraid to stand up to the right due to desire for revenue and ad bucks. Yet…