Our language is in constant evolution. Partly this is bottom up, from the inventiveness of creative personalities or writers for commercial advertising. Partly it is top down, from the powers that be as they seek to manipulate and control the thought processes of the broad public.

My brief essay today addresses the latter phenomenon and the introduction of the word “disinformation” into common parlance. There is a charming freshness to it, unlike the stale and repugnant word “propaganda.”

The word “disinformation” has a specific context in time and intent: it is used by the powers that be and by the mainstream media they control to denigrate, marginalize and suppress sources of military, political, economic and other information that might contradict the official government narrative and so dilute the control exercised by those in power over the general population. It is to remove “disinformation” from public life that the United States…