Repeating "There's no place like home" over and over again eventually put Dorothy back in a safe place, and told audiences across many generations that all we need to do is repeat pleasing thoughts during times of trouble and we could move the world. Of course, Dorothy is only an imaginary character in a wonderful film that depends on it's audience suspending reality. Repeating safe thoughts, or repeating anything for that matter, will not change your physical environment.
Still, the idea of repetition moving people to another world of the mind is real, and does have it's applications. Positive thinking can be useful. But repetition also has a brusque, darker, side. Without mincing words, it's called the "Big Lie" and is a very successful propaganda technique.
Popularized by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf (1925), the Big Lie centers around manipulating information so blatantly, or telling a lie so big, that no one would believe that - in Hitler's words - someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." The Big Lie was taken up by Joseph Goebbels, who was Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, and taken to new heights.
In a psychological profile of Adolf Hitler the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the forerunner to the CIA) put out a book titled A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler. Here's what the OSS had to say about Hitler's rules, which his Nazi henchmen would follow diligently:
... never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
I bring all of this up because a pattern is emerging from our political right: It doesn't matter what the truth is, as long as you tell a lie often enough people will eventually believe it.
Today it's Mitch McConnell and John Boehner criticizing financial reform. Proving that they are merely talking heads for Frank Luntz and his incessant Memo to GOP game plans, both are parroting Luntz's "Language of Financial Reform" talking point. Specifically, they are repeating Frank Luntz's "permanent bailout for Wall Street" language that he drew up months ago. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow does a great job of outlining how this came about here (watch the entire clip).
The funny thing about this is that Mitch McConnells' insincerity is so blatant that his home state's largest paper called him out on it. More specifically, Kentucky's Herald-Leader referred to McConnell's pandering to Wall Street, and how he parrots the financial reform memo written by GOP mind manager Frank Luntz. Here's a snippet:
McConnell's statements are perfectly calibrated to inflame the public. He insists the bill would "allow endless taxpayer-funded bailouts for big Wall Street banks." Their resemblance to the truth is another matter.You can read the entire piece here, which I highly recommend.
How bad has this Big Lie script gotten? Republicans have no problem promoting lies about a "Death Tax" (the estate tax), Death Panels (end of life counseling), Armageddon (fill in blank______), Obama's a socialist, Obama's a communist, Obama's a Nazi (intellectually you can't be all 3), Obama Deficits (actually inherited from Bush's disasters), and how taxes are going up (they've actually fallen for 95% of all Americans).
Then we have the little big lies from the birthers, the "he's a Muslim" crowd, the "he's not one of us" crowd, the "he makes us less safe" crowd, etc.
Look, at the end of the day we know where all of this is coming from. Republicans, Tea Partyers, and Conservatives are upset with who's in the White House and that a women from San Francisco is Speaker of the House. Throw in the fact that the top Democratic mouthpiece on financial reform (from the House of Representatives) is a homosexual, while President Obama's Chief of Staff is Jewish ... well, you can see where this is going.
Don't believe me? Take a look at the Tea Party crowds. I don't see America there. I see a fringe mob that's pissed off their team lost. They are not democracy in action. They are a sore losing mob. If I'm wrong, someone needs to explain to me why.
You will also need to explain the need for the Big Lie(s).
- Mark
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