The Obama administration will be remembered in history as the one that brought Osama bin Laden to justice. Its handling of the situation was practically flawless.
Nevertheless, there are two things in which the government erred slightly. With respect to these two matters, the Obama administration’s mistake was to tell the truth. In this cases, it would have been better for the United States if the government had told lies.
The tragic mass-murder in Tucson produced an almost instantaneous 
backlash against what many perceive to be vitriolic political speech in this country. This prompted an equally swift defensive pushback from those who felt their side of the political debate was being unfairly blamed for the act of a person who they argued was clearly mentally-disturbed
Most of the focus seems to be on guns. People point to the use of gunsights on maps and calls for “2nd Amendment solutions” as examples of political speech that has gone too far. I think it goes deeper than that.
The problem isn’t necessarily guns. After all, guns aren’t dangerous unless they are pointed at someone. The problem lies with the divisiveness of political speech in this country. It lies with the demonization of fellow Americans.
This demonization began long before Sarah Palin began to talk of “real Americans”. It has been going on for decades and is usually used by the Right to smear their opponents. If someone points out the only too real faults of this country, they are immediately attacked as an “America-hater” or traitor.
Warning: I’m going full Godwin’s Law right from the start.
During the middle of the 20th Century, the world watched as the German people were led into a disastrous multi-front war. Rational people have struggled to understand how the German public could have been led down the path to war and genocide. More than sixty years later it is still hard to believe it all happened.
These quotes offer an explanation about how a seemingly rational, modern populace could have descended into such madness.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” – Joseph Goebbels
“It is not truth that matters, but victory” – Adolph Hitler
“The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.” – Adolph Hitler
“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it” – Adolph Hitler
“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.” – Adolph Hitler
When I look around at the political climate in this country leading up to the 2010 elections, I am struck by how successfully the GOP has managed to mislead the American populace. I have come to the sad conclusion that the real difference between the Republicans and Democrats can be explained by the quotes above.
The Democrats looked at the disaster of the 1930’s and 40’s and came to the conclusion that we must always be on guard against this happening in America. The GOP looked at the same disaster and saw a road map to electoral success. How else to explain the shouts of socialism, death panels, trickledown economics, or the Iraq war?
What GOP lie of 2010 bugs you the most?
In 1994, Newt Gingrich unveiled the Contract for America. Many political analysts view this document as being helpful to the GOP’s effort to gain control of Congress in that year’s election. Now that the GOP finds itself in a similar situation in 2010, they have decided to release a Pledge to America with the hope that it will help them gain control of Congress in the mid-term elections. Whether that proves to be true is yet to be seen.
A draft version of the document has been released on the Internet. What I’ve read so far appears to be a typical GOP document filled with misdirection, misinformation, half-truths, and outright lies.
The misdirection starts on the first page in the intro. They save the lies for the content. I’ll deal with those in a later post.
An unchecked executive, a compliant legislature, and an overreaching judiciary have combined to thwart the will of the people and overturn their votes and their values, striking down long-standing laws and institutions and scorning the deepest beliefs of the American people.
What they say in that paragraph is true. The misdirection is that they want people to think they are talking about the current government when it is obvious that they are describing the Bush administration that was appointed by a conservative controlled Supreme Court and enabled by a compliant GOP-controlled Congress.
The dog days of August have long been known as “the silly season” in the media. Most people are busy enjoying the summer and the media has to stretch to find stories of interest. This is the time for “man bites dog” stories. It has been this way in this country for a long time.
Tonight, the silly season officially came to an end.
Anyone who is not blinded by hatred or ideology will admit that Barack Obama is one of the most skilled political orators to ever hold the office of President of the United States. He reaffirmed that status in a speech tonight to the joint houses of Congress.
The timing of the speech couldn’t have been better. During August, the health care debate seemed to be reaching an impasse. Opponents were twisting reasonable proposals into “death panels” and “government takeovers”. Supporters were complaining about lack of leadership, focus, and messaging. It was time to get the reform effort back on track.
President Obama addressed both sides tonight, as well as the huge number of people who were on neither side so far.
Rush told me this so it must be true. Sarah Palin said the same thing. She also said they want to kill her baby. We must stop them before it is too late.
Does anyone truly believe these claims?
According to conservative web sites and pundits the health care reform sponsored by Democrats will lead to “death panels” that will decide who lives and who dies. If you listen to talk radio you are told that the “evil libruls” want to kill off all of the old people in order to save money on health care. They never explain how this matches with their claims that liberals are all about tax and spend. That liberals never met an expensive program they didn’t like. According to them, it’s not liberals that want to save money, it is conservatives that are supposed to be all about cutting spending.
The conflict between their claims that ‘evil libruls’ want to go to extreme lengths to save money and at the same time are spendthrifts who only want to get as much of your tax dollars as possible isn’t the only paradox in their arguments. They also need to explain how the party that has always been for the weak and defenseless is all of a sudden going to turn on the very types of people they have always defended. On the other hand, when have conservatives ever shown the least bit of concern for the elderly or the disabled?
I could write far more about these nonsensical claims, but they don’t deserve the amount of attention I’ve already given them. They are fabricated out of thin air in an attempt to scare people.
A small sampling of current Republican lies talking points spin lies.
One of the most frustrating things about being a progressive in America is that we not only have to fight to get a fair hearing in the media we also have to battle the disinformation pushed by the Right.
Politics would be a lot more useful to the citizens of this country if there was a legitimate discussion about the pros and cons of policy proposals. Unfortunately, the Right doesn’t seem to want that discussion. I can’t really blame them since their policies have been shown to be faulty. All they seem to be left with are lies about the proposals offered by the Democrats.
The debate over the stimulus bill offers several examples of those Republican lies. Here are three outright lies that have been pushed by Republicans in the last few days.
This is what we were told. It is what many who voted for Sarah Palin believed. It is what a gentleman here in Sarasota believed enough to say to me directly a few days before the election: “Obama sympathizes with terrorists.”
On Friday, the US sent two Hellfire missiles from Afghanistan-based Predator drones into Zharki Village in Pakistan’s Waziristan region, accepted as the home of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda leadership. Eighteen people were reported killed in the two locations, locals report that the Taliban removed eight of the bodies:
Resident Allah Noor Wazir said he attended funerals for the owner of the targeted house, Din Faraz, his three sons and a guest.
“I also heard that three bodies had been taken away by Taliban. They say they belong to foreigners,” Wazir told the AP by telephone.
I feel for the innocent victims of these missile strikes (I will assume there were some family members killed who were not directly a part of the war), but from early reports it seems that the buildings they were in were valid military targets.
The image of Gov. Sarah Palin being promoted by the McCain campaign is of a straight-shooter who talks truth to power. The true image is of a person who lies repeatedly, even after being called out for her lies.
The Vice-Presidential debate offered more examples of her ability to lie with a straight face. All politicians obfuscate during debates and frequently misstate their opponent’s position. But, not all of them make up lies as they go along. Gov. Palin did that at least twice during Thursday’s debate.
One of the lies, about post-surge troop levels in Iraq, could have been caused by lack of knowledge on the part of Palin, but the other, about divestment of investments in Sudan, was a pure unadultrated prevarication.
Does anyone really think this woman is prepared to step into the Presidency of the United States if necessary? We need to send her back to Alaska, so she can keep the Russians at bay.