Illegitimate Truth?

I wonder how many of us ever consider the concept of legitimacy. Maybe we catch the cover of a magazine at the grocery checkout and think, “Oh, her. She’s beautiful.” Perhaps the image, instead, elicits an eyeroll, because we simply can’t stand that politician and everything he seems to stand for. It could be that the magazine sports the image of a person we don’t recognize. No matter the case, it is probably a safe bet we will not pause to wonder why that person even deserves to be recognized. His or her legitimate claim to fame is accepted and unquestioned.

That is a powerful tool of propaganda and an easy means of circumventing a viewer’s critical thinking pathways. A well-known doctor who is the head of a governmental agency pushes vaccines. An obscure doctor with a small family practice shares information about vaccine dangers on his social media pages. What are the chances an acquaintance of mine will accept the validity of the second doctor’s information when I try to share what I’ve learned from him? Obviously, it depends on the acquaintance, her health habits, and the quantity of mainstream media she consumes, but unless she has made an effort to educate herself about health matters and has looked beyond mainstream sources, she’s unlikely to be convinced. The doctor I trust simply doesn’t have the stamp of legitimacy that the first doctor enjoys.

Thanks to this concept of legitimacy and the ways in which it has been exploited, accurate information and/or truth are likely the last things these folks will actually get, and—perhaps surprisingly—those most likely to be taken in by an aura of legitimacy are the very ones who think they are too smart (well educated?) to be duped.

Ironic, isn’t it?