Monday, September 12, 2016

Joey...We hardly knew ya'

 As can be seen here, and from what has been referenced herein, this was originally  written four short years ago.  It was a time when the Red State Republicans routinely pounced upon any Yellow Dog Democrat for any reason, whether justified by birth, or race, or politics that had a liberal leaning, or, just as likely for no discernible reason whatever. .  


The real lesson here is not so much what I wrote regarding the, then current election, as my reasoning behind the tactics that were employed. Here, as then, I have endeavored to show that the master of political propaganda is alive and well.(Even contrary to reports of his death.) 

For your consideration this election cycle... :

 The Poison Dwarf…Revisited

Sunday, October 21, 2012 to Today....Just a few short weeks until we all vote again.

 

Please Think!

              And so...the election approaches... 

"A lie, repeated enough times, becomes the truth…"


"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

Yes…a big lie, like the one I reference in  the earlier article, repeated becomes believable to the point of supplanting the truth.  Sure it does…That much from the poison dwarf, who, if nothing else, showed us just how successful such a tactic could  be. So my mission here is to expose what is the real truth…and to ram it down anyone's throat who is too stupid to realize that they have been duped.

 
“Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship-run state has its roots in the street.”
Joseph Goebbels
Have you seen something like this at work today?  I must remark that back in the day, that was a recruitment call to enter the Sturm Abteilung. Their mandate, conquer and control the streets.  The Brown Shirts did just that and look at how things turned out for them...
.
To be sure, we don't call these people' brown shirts'  anymore. Politically correct is the dogma that rules our current  times, and yet these same people  are still out there, and still doing their best to control the streets. Infiltrating the ranks of legitimate protest groups they show up at town hall meetings,  shouting down anyone with opposing ideas. They stifle public debate.   TEA PARTY?   They create so much disorder that no free discussion is possible and they do it with impunity. And yet they are all still only tools, tools of their masters just as were their predecessors in the SA. The real control of the streets depends on the sponsor's agenda to steer the masses in the required direction. 
Of course the sponsor is Uncle Sam but today he works behind a screen that Cujo, hyped up on PCP, couldn't get through on a bet. Toto wouldn't stand a chance and neither do many of us. The screen is one of obfuscation, of deceit, of misrepresentation of facts and the half truths of lies. Each of us who takes the 'blue pill' allows that screen to remain in place.For the best current policy is to lie by telling ALL or PART of the TRUTH. 

"To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium. Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”
Joseph Goebbels

 
Ah, the press, the venerable fourth estate, if you can define such hosts as the 'Honey Badgers' like Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Steve Bannon,  and we, the television generation of couch potatoes are right where  the press wants us. So enter the talk show phenomenon that guides our choices of candidates these days. More bread and circuses.  And not just pundits of TV, we can barely listen to AM radio anymore so redolent with bias are the more vituperative and ill informed hosts. Half facts, in support of moronic arguments abound to the point of neausea, even in brief snippets as we surf for information. It should be noted that these churlish masters of ceremony are the most popular in their field. What does that say about the listening audience?

It would be comforting to believe that reported occurrences were at least factual, but yellow journalism has a long history here in these United States, where many of us are descendants of the same whiskey drummers and bible salesmen who pioneered concepts from Manifest Destiny to Madison Avenue. We all like a good show and so we watch...and we listen as sound bites for the intellectually uninvolved daily invade our thoughts. The sponsor's agenda every time. And we buy it all. It is designed for us to do so.The master told us it would be.


"Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans, which must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses. These slogans must be capable of being easily learned."
 
Joseph Goebbels


"Propaganda must reinforce anxiety concerning the consequences of defeat."
                                                                  
"It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success.”
 
Joseph Goebbels

 So, why do I quote from the Nazi Minister of Propaganda after all these years?  If you cannot answer that question, then you are prime fodder for the campaign excesses we witness daily in this year of 2016.  

   Labeling people with distinctive phrases like 'L'yin Ted' and 'Crooked Hillary'.' Easily learned and repeated'.  'A lie, repeated enough times becomes the Truth". 


"Propaganda may be facilitated by leaders with prestige."
 Joseph Goebbels


Attack and never apologize.  


A paraphrase perhaps and It does not matter whether that tactic has been learned from Roy Cohn or Joseph Goebbels. It is something that just works, and as noted by Dr. Goebbels, it works best on the less than educated segment of society.  Those, particularly, that are easily led.

No, friends and neighbors, If you are wondering, on November ninth, what happened yesterday, I ask that you reflect on what is written here.  As for me and mine, we are voting for Gary Johnson and Bill Weld.  No, I do not agree with everything he says, nor do I believe that any candidate's promises will be realized during his term .  It just does not happen.

Points to remember:

1. No!!! We are not going to build a wall around Mexico.  Mexico is broke and only subsists on monies returned to that country by workers who are in America illegally. Any idiot knows that. It has been true since the 1860's. 


2. These Mexican people are neither rapists nor murderers.  They are people just like you and I who only want a better life for their children.

3. Immigration?  The life's blood of a Republic is in its Immigration and  therefore it's immigration policy.  That much is incontrovertible and immutable. It has been true for all of our  two hundred and forty years.

 4. China?  Please let's make a deal, please!!!, and one that works for both sides and is enforceable.

5. NATO?  Absolutely. These so called allies have been on the gravy train long enough. On that I hope we can agree for George the first told ud in no uncertain terms 'Avoid entangling alliances'...

6.Russia, Think Back Mr. and Mrs. America. .  Russia recognized the fledgling United States in the very early 1800's.  Even before I was born.  ( I have tools that old...if they could only talk.)   I believe that Russia was  second after France to do so, and so our histories are intertwined since well before the abortion of Cold War perpetuated by Stalin and Truman. The Northmen and we have a long history on this continent and today I personally know many former Soviet Bloc peoples.  Trust me...they are just like us. All wanting to sleep out of the rain, eat two or three times a week and get laid occasionally.  The Northmen really are good people and if you do your research may well have discovered this continent 500 years before Columbus.  

Still, it cannot escape your ken that there is  Much to be done. And so I ask that you read, that you be informed beyond the propaganda and that you vote your conscience. No one can ask more...

For the historian:  Dr. Goebbels wrote more than twenty books. Researching them should be informative.  It was for me.

By the way, it should not go without notice here that H.L.Mencken, writing for the Baltimore Evening Sun,  told us that:

'The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron'

Please try to not vote for another moron.    Please...We have already suffered several...okay...maybe more than several.  You choose.   and Please take the red pill...Please.








Sunday, October 21, 2012

And so...the election approaches...

 

A lie, repeated enough times, becomes the truth…
Or…
Dismantling the myth of Republican Fiscal Responsibility

Of a certainty, nothing rankles me more definitively, than having to be subjected to E-Mails or otherwise listening to so called Republicans decry the excesses of the so called liberal Democrats, without one fact beyond their own twisted reasoning, backed up solely by bias, either racial, or with pseudo religiosity. It is abhorrent, to me as a reasoning being, that otherwise intelligent, reasoning beings, can be victimized, to the point of espousing unsupported facts by a torrent of what is nothing more than pure propaganda.  To that end, I offer these tid-bits in context from the master of that particular communication medium….

* * *

The Poison Dwarf…Revisited

It cannot be argued, this late in the game, either that President Obama has decreased our national debt, nor done anything to even move us in such direction that might accomplish that event. And yet the question remains, why? What is the real truth? Why is everyone blaming President Obama for a problem that's incipience was never in his court?

As an apologist for the state of affairs that finds us in this predicament, I will begin by noting that our national debt now stands at 97.6% of our GDP.  In monetary terms, that is $14.639 trillion.  A staggering amount and yet, only a part of that, (approximately 10%)  is due to policies either enacted, or proposed during the last three and a half years of President Obama's tenure.

Quantitatively of that 10% amount, some dollars are attributable to  'new' policies, proposed by President Obama, (such as 6% due to his economic stimulus packages ). Additionally, 20%, are attributable to policies enacted by GW the third, and supported or extended by President Obama, according to the CBO forecast as reported.

Okay…together that is around 30% of the total, and as I have indicated, only 10% directly attributable to President Obama. In correlation, it should also be noted that an article by David Leonhardt, of the New York Times states that "President Obama's agenda ... is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits", but also that he "...does not have a realistic plan for reducing the deficit...."

 How could that be otherwise, since in remembering back to my high school civics classes, it is Congress that has the constitutional authority to spend money and to levy taxes, Congress alone. Sure, the President has a veto, but Congress is wise to that trick and early on learned to wrap key 'pork' spending proposals with 'other' proposals so that by vetoing the one, the other is also cut. It should be noted that those public tit sucking leeches in Congress these days always craft their bills to make the opposing party look bad to the voters. It is a standard practice. de rigueur, and I am tempted to remark here that when an arrogant Dick Cheney remarked in 2002, 'Proved deficits don't matter.' I took that to mean as long as a Republican president was in power and you should as well. But today, one cannot turn on a television without hearing some inane PAC touting the lie that Barack Obama is responsible for the debt as it stands. Standard phrasing allows that 'we cannot afford four more years with the man who got us into this mess'.


"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


Yes…a big lie, like the one I reference above, repeated becomes believable to the point of supplanting the truth.  Sure it does…That much from the poison dwarf, who, if nothing else, showed us just how successful such a tactic could  be. So my mission here is to expose what is the real truth…and to ram it down anyone's throat who is too stupid to realize that they have been duped.
 

Therefore, why is it that so many Republicans are pissing and moaning and finger-pointing and vilifying President Obama on the national debt when so much of the blame, from the record, is so clearly in someone else's court? And exactly whose court are we discussing anyway? Is it strictly the 235 Republican Congressmen and 40 GOP senators that voted for the Paul Ryan 2012 budget that requires raising the debt ceiling repeatedly, or is the festering wound deeper? It this trend due to the 'tax and spend' liberal Democrats, or is it due to the 'don't tax and spend' profligate and greedy Republicans? Or…as I have noted above, is there something deeper? And whatever happened to that legendary 'Republican fiscal responsibility?

"Propaganda must reinforce anxiety concerning the consequences of defeat."
                                                                  
"It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success.”
Joseph Goebbels

So what is that success? Questions, many questions and yet, it seems that answers to those questions depend entirely upon who you ask, and how they want to 'spin' their reply. Lie, and lie convincingly, by telling either all, or a part of the truth. (No, Joe Goebbels didn’t say that. It's one of mine but I'm seriously thinking of having it appended to our national motto. At the very least it should be printed on our money, which isn't even worth the cost of burning. Now, we are selling it to Ford to recycle into dashboards.)

To be frank though, we have all become accustomed to reasoning of this same sort, used to portend dire events, throughout the most disastrous, and fiscally irresponsible presidency of the preceding administration, where we actively watched George the third, take our economy from a surplus in 2000, to a doubling of the national debt at $11.3 trillion in 2008. To a large extent, this was fueled by unfunded Medicare Part 'D', which US Comptroller, General David Walker, called, 'the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the sixties.'

Remember people, Medicare was 'broke' in 2003, and I promise, I'm not making that up. George the third knew that, (no one is that stupid), but he was afraid of losing the 2004 election …seriously afraid and so he decided to give seniors 'free drugs', and thereby, buy their votes. The cost? $1 trillion over ten years, no offsets, no dedicated financing, and our grandchildren get to pay the bill. It was all just Bread and Circuses again, and  all deficit spending. Thank you John McCain for having the courage to vote against this abortion of trust.

Then, of course, on George's side of the ledger, there were unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the tax cuts of  2001-2003, but at least George was following big shoes. His oft quoted mentor in things financial, at the insistent prompting of the eminence gris Dick Chaney, was, of course Ronald Reagan, who, while effectively demonstrating to us all through some rosy scenario rhetoric, that 'trickle down economics' was little more that trickle up poverty, managed to triple the national debt to $3 trillion during his tenure.

Why?  The same reason that mired George the third, if you are being charitable…or George the idiot, if you are not. Hey guys… If you cut taxes and continue to spend, your debt will continue to rise, and rise, and rise. Governments have literally no other source of income. If I pull that kind of shit, I get sent to the hall of many doors, perhaps a good repository for our esteemed legislators as well.

So, at this point you are saying, that I introduced myself above as an apologist. So, in that capacity I shall start at the beginning and attempt to define my argument as to why the Republican Party has consistently moved away from the core values that once set them apart.

"Propaganda may be facilitated by leaders with prestige."
 Joseph Goebbels

Many years ago, and far away from here, I hearkened to the siren song of conservatism. After all, a conservative is someone who conserves, someone who saves and above all, does no harm. A conservative is a fiscally responsible person who never spends more than he has and who abhors the idea that a condition of debt can be a desirable thing.  ('deficits don't matter', my ass…) That was my goal. That was what I believed a responsible American should do, and so conservatism became my goal.

Then we flash forward…past Jimmy Carter…and, in 1979, that meant Ronald Reagan, since at that time he was certainly sporting all the right credentials and far from the RINO moniker that would characterize him today.  Then though, I was enthralled. Here was the man who could save AMERICA. Here was a man who would not back down, a hero, and a true man we could all emulate. I became a member of the Republican National Committee at a time when conservatism was less than a joke in official circles and yet; the Gipper had told us that he had the solution. After all, we certainly could trust 'the Gipper', couldn't we? He did have prestige….

(Retrospectively, and in full view of the RINO appellation above, we must remark that Ronald Reagan was a man that would scarcely ever be invited to a Tea Party in this current era…

For example…. His 1981, $749 billion 'supply side' tax cuts brutally led the way towards huge annual deficits.  Then, in order to keep up against a losing financial scheme, Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times before he left office and all of us holding a $3 trillion deficit. He also granted amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants in an effort to make them tax paying American citizens. In addition, Ronald Reagan dramatically increased federal spending by repeatedly raising the annual military budget. (Star wars technology is expensive. Just ask George Lucas.) And let's not too quickly forget those above mentioned 3 million cheap laborers.

Ronald Reagan's brand of  'Reaganomics prosperity' was aimed strictly at those who were already well off. Home ownership under his administration, fell and average worker's wages dropped repeatedly. I know, because I was one of those workers. Then there was the 10% 'luxury tax'. The only 'urban aid' program to survive slashing public service and job training cuts was federal aid for highways, which primarily benefited suburbs, not cities. Ronald Reagan demonstrated to us all that his tax cuts for the rich, 'job creators', benefited no one but the rich, who created damn few jobs. The 'new federalism' shifted responsibility onto states without necessary provisions for funding. Deregulation and Cost Benefit Analyses, were the watchwords of the day and 'ideological arithmetic' ignored the costs.

In 1983, Reagan abandoned the conservative philosophy that had gained him the White House when he openly asked for bipartisan support to 'save social security' from bankruptcy by quoting Franklin Roosevelt. In three short years, Ronald Reagan had at last learned that Government was indeed the problem. At the request of bankers, ( a true evil empire, if there ever was one), Ronald Reagan initiated the free fall, free for all slide of American banks when he de-regulated exactly how banks should behave in their fiscal responsibility to depositors.  Multiple home mortgages were traded as risky securities with very little that could qualify as regulation. Banks became insurance companies and bond traders, together with all the vice versa attendant. The end was fast approaching but in retrospective it too another twenty years to bottom out.

Okay…maybe it still hasn't bottomed out. The pundits and the hoo-hah crowd still feel 'bullish' but shoveling shit uphill, as we all are these semi-bright days of twenty twelve, it sure feels bottomed out to me.  But back then I watched as a younger man, and I noted facts here and there, and I concluded at that time, that Richard Nixon, for all of his idiosyncrasies and 'southern strategy', and Gerald Ford, serving out his 'reward' job,  were the last truly fiscally responsible Republicans.

No, Ronald Reagan was not a conservative, small 'c' or big 'C', and yet he was a Federalist, in the truest sense and a man that I truly admire to this very day. May God bless you, mister president for having the courage to DO something. Small government, strict adherence to a Constitution that our forefathers died to have ratified, free trade and the opportunities it expresses and I thank you Mister President for the 'amnesty' you offered those former 'illegals'.  Today they are indeed productive American citizens, as you envisioned, and so are their children, Yet, the problem remains that your economic policies did not work…Still, the only answer we got was Bush 43….

("We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move." 2003) Yes, George the don't tax and spend liberal, in conservative clothing of course, actually said that..

So, in the intervening years, between then, and now, Why have my icons of the political right failed me and why have they consistently failed America. I warn you, the answers are unpleasant. Some of those answers may disgust you. All of them may lead you to believe that your trust has been misplaced.


“Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship-run state has its roots in the street.”
Joseph Goebbels

Back in the day, that was a mandate to enter the Sturm Abteilung. Their mandate, conquer and control the streets.  The Brown Shirts did just that and look at how things turned out.

To be sure, we don't call these people by that title anymore. Politically correct is the dogma that rules our times, and yet they are still out there, and still doing their best to control the streets. Infiltrating the ranks of legitimate protest groups they show up at town hall meetings,  shouting down anyone with opposing ideas. They stifle public debate. They create so much disorder that no free discussion is possible and they do it with impunity. And yet they are all still only tools, tools of their masters just as were their predecessors in the SA. The real control of the streets depends on the sponsor's agenda to steer the masses in the required direction.

Of course the sponsor is Uncle Sam but today he works behind a screen that Cujo, hyped up on PCP, couldn't get through on a bet. Toto wouldn't stand a chance and neither do many of us. The screen is one of obfuscation, of deceit, of misrepresentation of facts and the half truths of lies. Each of us who takes the 'blue pill' allows that screen to remain in place.


"To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium. Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”

Joseph Goebbels

 
Ah, the press, the venerable fourth estate  and we, the television generation of couch potatoes are right where  the press wants us. So enter the talk show phenomenon that guides our choices of candidates these days. More bread and circuses.  And not just pundits of TV, we can barely listen to AM radio anymore so redolent with bias are the more vituperative hosts. Half facts, in support of moronic arguments abound to the point of neausea, even in brief snippets as we surf for information. It should be noted that these churlish masters of ceremony are the most popular in their field. What does that say about the listening audience?

It would be comforting to believe that reported occurrences were at least factual, but yellow journalism has a long history here in these United States, where many of us are descendants of the same whiskey drummers and bible salesmen who pioneered concepts from Manifest Destiny to Madison Avenue. We all like a good show and so we watch...and we listen as sound bites for the intellectually uninvolved daily invade our thoughts. The sponsor's agenda every time. And we buy it all. It is designed for us to do so.


"Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans, which must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses. These slogans must be capable of being easily learned."
Joseph Goebbels

 'Responses which the audience previously possesses'. Today that extends much farther than 'terrorist ragheads that hate us'. Today that labeling extends to the 47% of our population so recently characterized as 'victims'. And the 'distinctive slogans' pandering to an atmosphere of fear, engendered and perpetuated solely to refine a purpose of hatred for everyone that is different from the targeted listener.  And it works. Old Joe told us it would. 

So here we are, with two weeks to go to another election where nothing substantive will be decided. Taxes will stay as low as they were in 1953. Republicans will vote against anything the Democrats want. Democrats will vote against anything the Republicans initiate and the number of 'victims' of it all will grow. China bashing will continue as an easy target for all of our ills even though our national debt is mostly owned by us. If you like, I can spell that last word with capital letters but do the research, you'll see what I'm saying. 

No, there is no short term solution to this problem, none. In fact the only solution is for people to realize that we are all riding this rock together and it is high time we concentrated our efforts on things that we can agree on instead of the things that divide us.

Never fear though, that accomplishes nothing and remember, there is still time…sure there is. The world doesn't end until late this December…




Quotations taken from Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda to The National Socialist Party of Germany.