Everywhere you look, calamities gather speed while the klaxons of alarm blare from all compass points. Got money? Looks like soon it will be worthless. Wondering if Mr. Putin has had enough of "Joe Biden's" brainless effrontery to lob some hypersonic Big Ones in our collective face? Relying on that retirement account you have no direct control over while the financial markets wobble? Need to fill up the gas tank of your pickup truck twice a week? Can't find a new condenser to fix the failing fridge? Entertaining rumors of looming famine. Credit cards maxed out? Sheriff stapling an eviction notice on your door? Beloved younger brother declaring that henceforward they are your sister? Hearing that all those vaxxes and boosters you obediently submitted to might rearrange your DNA?

These are just a few of the concerns zinging through the zeitgeist these late days of the republic. You are correct to be anxious about them, so at least don't worry about worrying. Just understand that the more events spool out in the direction of danger, the more you will be warned against "disinformation." The good part is that now we know the identity of at least one person who is officially in charge of that: "disinformation expert" Nina Jankowicz (NiJank), new chief of Washington's Disinformation Governance Board. Whose idea was that, by the way?

Homeland Security Sec'y Alejandro Mayorkis (AlMay) didn't seem to know anything pertaining to disinformation last week when grilled in committee by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), including two of the most notorious cases in recent memory: Did the Steele Dossier include Russian disinformation? AlMay said he was "not equipped" to answer that question. Ditto the question — now definitively settled — as to whether Hunter Biden's laptop stuffed with grifting memoranda was for-real. Of course, both of those matters were labeled previously as disinformation by his new expert hire, NiJank, who, it appears, is similarly unequipped to discuss the particulars at issue. But all this does raise the parallel issue: how much depraved insolence is the public supposed to tolerate from its public servants?