Even deceit has practical limits.

Only Truth can give true reputation: only reality can be of real profit. One deceit needs many others, and so the whole house is built in the air and must soon come to the ground. Unfounded things never reach old age. They promise too much to be much trusted, just as that cannot be true which proves too much.

Baltasar Gracián – The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

Our digital world has made veracity much more democratic in that much of the time we may pursue it ourselves to probe official narrative, media stories or merely popular assumptions. Only potentially democratic of course, because pursuing veracity is not an overwhelmingly powerful human trait.

Yet anyone with a web browser usually has access to narratives more plausible than official or popular narratives if they choose to look. Not always possible of course, the fog or war is an example of that. Perhaps more significantly, anyone with a web browser has access to scepticism – pointers to what are uncertain, improbable, misleading, deceitful, even absurd narratives about the real world.

This seems to raise an interesting question. Has government resorted to promoting deceitful narratives in order to preserve its moral ascendency over scepticism? Or was it always like this, has government deceit merely become more transparent?

It is necessary for any hierarchy to preserve some kind of edge from the top downwards, some kind of authority over important narratives even if it isn’t moral authority. General self-interest in any medium to large organisation will often do to provide that edge. Keeping a job, staying in line for promotion, that kind of thing.

If we return to government deceit then self-interest is also a key way to promote acceptance. Put crudely it goes something like – accept the official narrative or you are a bad, dubious or deluded person, an outsider. Promote the official narrative and you are at least socially secure. Two more key ways to promote acceptance are policing and the law.

A problem has arisen with our digital world in that governments have no way to establish narrative ascendency without some level of deceit, with or without enforcement. Deceit may be lying by omission, distortion or outright falsehood. Combine this with the suppression of scepticism and governments have their tools for maintaining narrative ascendency over the general population.

Humiliation seems to be another tool – official narratives which are so ludicrous that acceptance is a measure of loyalty. This one seems to be relatively new and likely to be disastrous. Even deceit has practical limits.