The Propagandists

So the media is all flipping out about my Congressman, Steve Cohen, calling propagandists, what they are… propagandists. In doing so he chose to use one of the most notorious propagandists of modern times, Joseph Goebbels.

Folks have said he called Republicans “Nazi’s”. That’s not what I heard. What I heard was a guy that’s tired of hearing a big lie repeated over and over again until it becomes conventional wisdom.

That is what the Big Lie is:

…a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

Sound familiar?

It should, because as Congressman Cohen notes, the lie about the Healthcare Reform Bill being a “government takeover” of healthcare has been characterized as a falsehood again and again. Despite this fact, far too many Republican lawmakers, candidates and boosters have continued to repeat this lie for their personal and political gain with the help of a compliant media.

In effect, they have repeated the same lie enough times that it has infiltrated the American mind to the point that if you played word association with just about anyone and said “government takeover” they’d say “Obamacare”.

That is programming via propaganda.

But just because you invoke one of the world’s greatest propagandists, who also happens to be a Nazi, doesn’t mean you’re calling people a Nazi. It means you’re calling them propagandists.

It’s not as if Republicans didn’t know what they were doing. Frank Luntz “urged” it, and it was done. If only Democratic lawmakers would listen like this!

The point is, you don’t get a Pulitzer Prize winning media organization to call your rhetoric the Lie of the Year if what you’re saying ain’t a lie. And you can sit there and repeat your “winning phrase” all you want, you can vote to repeal, you can wave signs saying “Keep Government out of my Medicare” and it doesn’t make what you’re saying true.

“Government takeover” conjures a European approach where the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are public employees. But the law Congress passed, parts of which have already gone into effect, relies largely on the free market.

Free market? I thought you guys all had a hard on for all that free market stuff. Guess not.

In the end, if I say you’re like Walt Disney, I’m saying I think you’re creative and good with the marketing, not the creator of world recognized brand or owner of a slew of theme parks.

If I say you’re like James Carville, I’m saying you remind me of Skeletor, not that you’re married to Mary Matalin (you should thank me for that).

And if I say you’re like Joseph Goebbels, then I’m saying you’re not only a damn good ideology based liar, but pretty damn persistent and consistent as well as pretty damn good at getting away with it, not that you’re a Nazi.

Though I guess you’d be proving my point if you did stretch and say I was calling you a Nazi, wouldn’t you?

Republicans should either take the comment recognizing your largely successful effort to defraud the American people as a compliment and move on, or if being a propagandist that uses their propaganda in the service of creating one of the worst public health nightmares in human history is not your intention…stop being a propagandist and start telling the truth.

Here’s the whole speech.

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