Sunday, August 19, 2012

Telling Me Lies


We have noted in previous posts the current Republican strategy of avoiding the truth on the campaign trail and feeding the public a constant stream of lies, lies and more and bigger lies. Even the best politicians have stretched the truth on occasion, but never has anybody deliberately planned a complete divorce from reality as the Republican/Teabaggers are doing today.
The Romney campaign has turned to a strategy of swamping the public with flat-out, blatant lies, one after another, again and again, endlessly and lavishly repeated. They do this because they are making a calculation that it will work! So what is going on? And can democracy survive this assault?...

Here is how it works. Each lie is developed in the right's machine, using something currently in the news to reinforce an ongoing narrative about "liberals." The lie percolates up through a well-worn process where the germ of the story is planted in smaller outlets, and variations of it are tried out until one seems to resonate. Next, larger right-wing media operations pick up the developed "story" and drive it further. It gets amplified on the radio, FOX News and the right's newspapers. Finally the corporate media takes it out to more and more people, covering themselves with the claim they are just "reporting" on a "story" that is "already out there."

One way or another the lie is repeated and repeated and repeated (and repeated) in various forms through various channels that reach various target groups, until it becomes a "truth." Once it has become a "truth" the Romney campaign uses this "truth" to claim Democrats and President Obama are harming the country.
The idea is to overwhelm the opponent with false accusations and tie them up in denials of the lies. It's success lies in the public's trust that no one would lie all the time. Hopefully, the constant stream of crap will work against itself, as the recent examples of Soledad O'Brien and even Chuck Todd have shown.

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