How Long Will The Lies Work?

It is painfully apparent to any relatively objective and intelligent person that Conservative side of the Culture Wars is built on lies.

Mainly the lie of American Exceptionslism which, when viewed throught the lens of those Wars boils down to one central lie. White God-fearing Males are superior to everyone else on the planet earth.

Through the decades, that lie has increasingly come under scrutiny and assault through the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Liberation Movement, and the campaigns for LGBT equality. Not only has that lie come under attack….it has been conclusively been proven to be wrong, to indeed be a blatant lie.

Not by rhetoric and invective, but by fact. The proven fact of People of all colors, and women, and gays, actually showing through deed and action that they are demonstrably and indubitably equal in intelligence, competency and ability.

The Conservatives have been forced to stop insinuating that they/we aren’t equal to White males and that Christianity is not superior to other religions.

At least in public.

As that Big Lie has died every time it has been exposed to reality, the Conservatives have been forced to retreat to smaller, less obvious, more ‘clever’ lies.

They have been forced to lie resort to lies like ‘Trickle Down Economics, ‘Affirmative Action is prejudice against Whites,’ ‘Gays will disrupt the military,’ ‘All Muslims are evil,’ etc.

As THOSE lies are in the process of being rejected…to the extent that enough Americans voted for a person of color for President…they have now been reduced to inventing fear based lies on specific issues like Health Care and Climate Change.

And that is the stage we are at now. Soon those lies will also be exposed for what they are…The Pathetic Wails of a Dying Paradigm.

But in the meantime, in the lagtime between when the lie is spread by The Mighty Wurlitzer of the Conservative Message Machine and when they are proven to be the blatant fear based lies they are…They are working.

Based purely on the lies of the Conservatives Obama’s poll numbers took a big hit (though it looks like he is rebounding) and support for “The Obama Health Care Reform Plan” (even though technically there IS no Obama Health Care Reform Plan!) has plummetted.

Again, based solely on the fear based lies and disinformation of the Conservative Message Machine.

And this has occurred no matter what efforts ….so far….have been made to dispel or refute those outright lies.

Which illustrate three seperate realities at once. The first of course is that the hard core conservatives are as impervious to facts as Superman is impervious to bullets. But we knew that. According to them, they are fighting to take their country back from evil, colored, communists. So obviously, any facts that dispute the lies they are fed are just dismissed as propaganda from the teeming horde of non-white socialist fascist that are stealing their country. Duh. To them, there simply ARE no objective facts. Only the ‘clever’ lies that they are fed by Rush…and Chuck Grassley, can be believed. No matter how many times they are proven to be false.

The second is very simple and has been true for the forty years I have been participating in politics. The Democrats SUCK at messaging. I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say that a 10% increase in messaging effectiveness would eliminate about 50% of the lies.

And yet the Dems STILL, after all of these decades, can’t seem to get that through their thick heads.

And the third point is of course, the media. This is more or less a subset of point two, but also a separate problem on it’s own. The media needs controversy to make a profit. The problem comes when they are willing to present the Conservative’s lies as facts to engender that controversy….and reap those profits.

The time has come to end this segment of the Big Lie. That selling controversy based on lies is somehow “news.” That somehow the media is serving the public by essentially selling the lies of the Conservatives. That somehow they are no longer required to fact check the lies that they broadcast as “part of the discussion.’

There is only one conclusion to be drawn: For Profit “news” just does not work in the public interest.

It is time, apparently for a ‘socialized’ news source as well. Or at least holding NPR to the standards of one of the last real news sources, the PBS News Hour….and they could stand to clean up their act as well!

But the message that we must take away from this latest round of lies is this…..Messaging, Messaging, Messaging.

It has never been clearer, the lies of the Conservatives, and the coordinated apparatus they use to sell thenm to the public, simply MUST be broken.

And they can only be broken by finding more effective ways of spreading the truth.