MORE THOUGHTS
President Bush's defense of his actions with the claim that he is a war time president reminds me of the fellow who killed his mother and father and then pleaded with the court for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.
The sleazy Republicans are after PBS now. Their strategy is the same as that being used against Social Security: attack and claim a problem, even though there is no problem in need of correction. Social Security is not on the brink of bankruptcy, nor is Public Television excessively biased toward liberal views. The Republicans know that just by asserting over and over that there is a problem that eventually people will come to accept the claims as true and begin to demand that something be done. They know that if they repeat often enough and loud enough the claim that Social Security needs saving and that PBS is dominated by liberal ideas people will begin to believe them. This is the same propaganda technique used by the Nazis. A lie repeated often enough will finally be believed. The remedy they espouse for Social Security, of course, is to destroy it, and their remedy for PBS is to fill it with purely neocon political programming.
Sadly, the scheme will probably work. The nation is on a neo-fascist track now and there isn't much that will slow it down, let alone stop the rush to disaster. I don't know why Americans fall for such political manipulation, but I suspect that part of the answer lies in the dumbing down of educational efforts over the past several decades. Of course, simple minded television is also partly responsible. These are only a couple of possible and partial explanations. The simple-mindedness of Americans, like most other phenonena, has many causes and there is no smoking gun that we can point to as "the" cause. The fact is, we are a public incapable of critical thinking and easily led astray by unscrupulous politicans who exploit our stupidity for their gain. The question that bugs me is why anyone would want to be leader of a people too stupid to realize when they're being manipulated. Being a leader among such people strikes me as too much like shooting fish in a barrel to have any appeal: there being no challenge, only those with no self esteem at all will find value in it.
The sleazy Republicans are after PBS now. Their strategy is the same as that being used against Social Security: attack and claim a problem, even though there is no problem in need of correction. Social Security is not on the brink of bankruptcy, nor is Public Television excessively biased toward liberal views. The Republicans know that just by asserting over and over that there is a problem that eventually people will come to accept the claims as true and begin to demand that something be done. They know that if they repeat often enough and loud enough the claim that Social Security needs saving and that PBS is dominated by liberal ideas people will begin to believe them. This is the same propaganda technique used by the Nazis. A lie repeated often enough will finally be believed. The remedy they espouse for Social Security, of course, is to destroy it, and their remedy for PBS is to fill it with purely neocon political programming.
Sadly, the scheme will probably work. The nation is on a neo-fascist track now and there isn't much that will slow it down, let alone stop the rush to disaster. I don't know why Americans fall for such political manipulation, but I suspect that part of the answer lies in the dumbing down of educational efforts over the past several decades. Of course, simple minded television is also partly responsible. These are only a couple of possible and partial explanations. The simple-mindedness of Americans, like most other phenonena, has many causes and there is no smoking gun that we can point to as "the" cause. The fact is, we are a public incapable of critical thinking and easily led astray by unscrupulous politicans who exploit our stupidity for their gain. The question that bugs me is why anyone would want to be leader of a people too stupid to realize when they're being manipulated. Being a leader among such people strikes me as too much like shooting fish in a barrel to have any appeal: there being no challenge, only those with no self esteem at all will find value in it.
posted by Jerry at 1:48 PM
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