Some progressives, thinking folks, moderates and so forth find right-wing propaganda not only impermissibly misleading but downright infuriating. They get themselves all worked up over the latest reactionary fantasies designed to bamboozle the masses, but it seems to me that a touch more amusement and a tad less outrage would work better all around.
Don't take these retro-clowns so seriously is my advice. Because confronting their "arguments" with disgusted solemnity only lends a clownish credence to what they say, even though they always say it with the religious fervor of Jehovah's Witnesses and the ideological certainty of reeducated Pol Potists.
Doubtless those tactics -- that confident combined attitude -- by themselves may occasionally snare the witless victim, but I'm convinced that what snares even more witlessness is the often inflamed reaction on the left to the unembellished silliness of the right.
Hey, perhaps where there's smoke there's fire, the uninitiated may think -- otherwise why is the left so seemingly distressed?
What prompted these preliminary thoughts was a David Sirota column I read this morning, via Real Clear Politics. Granted, following a recent right-wing encounter Mr. Sirota wasn't reduced to carpet-chewing dimensions, but he edged close -- and I confess, for quite understandable reasons.
The encounter itself I'll let Sirota describe:
I was momentarily tongue-tied last week after running face-first into conservatives' newest (and most ridiculous) talking point: the one designed to stop Congress from passing an economic stimulus package.
During a Christmas Eve appearance on Fox News, I pointed out that most mainstream economists believe the government must boost the economy with deficit spending. That's when conservative pundit Monica Crowley said we should instead limit such spending because President Franklin Roosevelt's "massive government intervention actually prolonged the Great Depression." Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett eagerly concurred, saying "historians pretty much agree on that."
Now that is funny stuff. And I suppose my "initial reaction" would have been strikingly similar to Sirota's: "paralysis … mouth-agape … deer-in-the-headlights."
Still, there is some stuff that comes out of the mouths of right-wing babes that is so patently ahistorical, only an explosion of guffaws is appropriate for public consumption.
But "they" beat Sirota to the punch. "Only after collecting myself did I say that such assertions about the New Deal were absurd. But then I was laughed at, as if it was hilarious to say that the New Deal did anything but exacerbate the Depression."
You see? The right has the tactic of amused, even riotously inspired ridicule down pat. And they've been pulling that stunt since the Sixties on a crowded plane of political-cultural issues.
The key, of course, is to distort history: First, frame the past in any way you like; second, treat any confrontation with it as laughable revisionism.
In short, give opponents the old "There you go again" treatment -- with a loud and sturdy cackle.
Do the Monica Crowleys of this world actually believe their own propaganda? As to that, naturally, I can't really say. What I can say, however, is that the best propaganda is that which is a sinisterly unknowable twist on the known historical truth.
Virtually anyone who has done any reading on the Great Depression knows that FDR's interventionism did not end it. But you will note that Ms. Crowley didn't say that. What she said instead was that FDR's actions "prolonged" the Great Depression.
Care to argue with that? Care to argue, that is, with a negative? You'll lose. Because in the right's historical world, all of its unexecuted prescriptions would have worked, you see -- because pure theory is a marvelously accommodating thing.
And that by itself is a simple enough proposition to throw in the face of right-wing propagandists, right after you're finished laughing.
Republicans always try to invent new realities
Some things to consider about deficit spending
Hannity's America sure ain't My America !
When you Lie all your life you Go Insane
These people have been lying for their entire lives. They have no concept of what the truth is. Really. They believe that what they SAY actually materializes into reality. It's what their guru Lee Atwater taught them.
Make up a scenario, stick to it until you bleed, and it will become reality. At least for YOU it will.
The problem is that the people who ascribe to this way of thinking don't realize there are millions outside of their practice of basing life on lies that are not part of their delusions.
Yes, Martha, there are people who live in reality. They live in the truth. They never lie. Like it or not they realize reality contains good and bad and they usually roll up their sleeves and work to make reality better. They do not sit on the sidelines and eschew people while they work to make their lives better.
We used to have a name for people who stand about putting other people down, sneering about it, lying all the time, destroying lives of anyone coming near. We called them BORES.
Not republicans, bores. But then the republicans adopted the "bore" as their party aspiration and changed the term to "republican". They haven't changed at all, they're still lying bores.
Oh yes, when you live your entire life lying and living in a fantasy world created by your pretense it is usually described as being insane. These people are insane.
When will the world at large begin to jettison insane people from ruling the rest of us? Now is not soon enough for me.
We have another one in the EU as I type.
The Jews Said That About the Nazis, Too - and Look What Happened
Selah.
I agree
Who is "We"
While the public still thought the Reich Wing a joke, our mainstream media took them seriously. Unfortunately the public was already conditioned to take the media seriously and did not recognize that the media had been compromised by corporate consolidation.
By the way, for a good laugh at W's expense, take a look at these Bushisms.
Quick Comedy the Best Weapon
That's the nature of bs
Do the Monica Crowleys of this world actually believe their own propaganda?
It doesn't really matter if the Monica Crowleys of this world believe their own propaganda, or more appropriately in this case bullsh*t.
What does matter is, a significant number of "Joes the Plumber" and other assorted Sarah Palin-skirt sniffers and Ted Nugent-fans believe the propaganda/bullsh*t enough to continue supporting a political ideology diametrically opposed to their own best economic self-interests: i.e. Milton Friedman-style "free market economics."
I'm sure we all know, or know of, some one who is a dues-paying-anti-union-union member or a unionized public employee who votes Republican because he just hates "big government?" Surely the Friedmanian "free-market" economics practiced in this, and much of the world, over the last twenty-odd years has done nothing to improve the economic lot of middle income earners, whether they are blue collar factory workers or white collar cubicle moles toiling in the obscurity of some governmental office or the financial industry.
Yet, until the advent of Web sites such as this one and television commentators like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow or unless one has a predilection to dig up historical and/or factual evidence on one's own, there was little to nothing in the way of counterbalance to the kind of propaganda/bullsh*t practiced by the Monica Crowleys and FauxNewses of this world.
A passage from professor Harry Frankfurt's essay On Bullshit succinctly illustrates the mindset of the Monica Crowleys of this world as well as the editorial policy of FauxNews:
TO THE ROYALISTS WHO CLAIM FDR PROLONGED THE DEPRESSION
Oh man, can I attest to