Opposing political signs in neighbors’ yards in Maple Bluff, Wisconsin (Photo by Ruth Conniff/ Wisconsin Examiner)
“Truth Decay” is rotting our politics and public discourse, according to political scientist Ray Block. Block delivered the keynote address at the WisPolitics “polling summit” at the Madison Club this week, where a panel of pollsters discussed trends in the 2024 election. (Top takeaway: No one knows who is going to win.)
“We’re in a worrying place,” Block warned, with disinformation and misinformation eroding confidence in election integrity and public institutions. “Lies kill democracy,” he said. If people can’t debate in good faith, public trust, community cohesion and ultimately all of our democratic institutions will collapse.
Block is the inaugural Michael D. Rich Distinguished Chair for Countering Truth Decay at the Rand Corporation, where researchers first began focusing on the degradation of truth in our current political and social media environment because it posed a threat to the value of scientific and academic expertise. After all, if facts don’t matter, research and hard-won expertise lose their currency.