This is a short diary but an important one, IMHO, as we are all well familiar with dissembling, rambling Democrats stuttering their way through a nuanced wordfest on CNN or MSNBC while the Republicans all suddenly appear at once screaming “RELEASE THE MEMO!” or whatever else word tested propaganda Putin has sent them like some mix of a 3rd grade bully and the Borg.
The problem for us Dems is that we’re smart. We’re honest. And we see the world for what it is: complex, nuanced, and with room for many opinions, multiple cultures, and various points of view.
NONE of this translates to the propaganda game we’re now fighting with the GOP-Russia Axis currently attempting to dismantle American democracy.
As any student of history knows (or certainly any reader of George Orwell), when democracy breaks down into fascism, it becomes a war of slogans.
Not debate.
Debate is when both sides agree to the premises and underlying facts of the world. This used to be the Republican Party. This used to be how real debates took place before elections.
No more.
The Republican Party is no longer interested in debate. No longer interested in the will of the people. No longer interested in respecting democracy itself.
They are about rallying the gullible and feeble minded using propaganda techniques.
This is, of course, nothing new to history. It’s the same thing con men like Trump have done to sell snake oil to the rubes since the dawn of humanity. It’s the same con the evangelical movement uses to sell their fake Christianity in their mega-churches. It’s the same con Hitler and Stalin and Mussolini used to consolidate power in their respective countries.
Don’t be surprised it’s happening here. Be surprised it hasn’t happened here more frequently.
The way we push back is simple. We create simple and clear messaging at our end.
I know what you’re thinking: Democrats NEVER do this. And you’re right. And it fucking infuriates me.
I screamed here on Daily Kos for years during the Obama Administration that our branding and messaging was for shit. I begged the Dems to brand the Affordable Care Act “Americare” and to sell it before the Republicans negatively branded it, which they did (“Obamacare”). No surprise to see a con man like Trump resurrect “Make America Great Again” as both code for his White Supremacist base but also because it’s a great slogan that works well for his ethno-nationalist racism that he sells.
Dems rarely do this well. Hillary Clinton never once bothered to come up with a clear and clean sloganeering approach, certainly nothing that touched Obama’s “Yes We Can” or Bill Clinton’s “The Man From Hope.”
But with Trump we have a chance because the toxic treason of his collaboration with Russia is so reprehensible, and so clearly a disgrace, that branding it or what it is should not be hard even for the rubes and gullible in the red states.
Yet Dems go on TV and they talk in measured, careful, nuanced terms about what’s taken place.
“There’s questions that need to be answered.”
“We still don’t know what happened.”
“What possibly could have might have if only we could find out more and then maybe the unspeakable might have happened.”
“If we find out that there’s more to this story than I don’t know what.”
Fuck that mealy mouthed shit, Dems, and fuck you for your verbal cowardice. We have two fucking indictments of Trump’s inner circle. We have emails from Don Jr. and Wikileaks and an on-the-record meeting with all of Trump’s advisers and Putin advisers that the Trump team lied about (under oath) for nearly a year.
Fuck you for parsing this shit any longer.
Meanwhile a thug like Steve Bannon (of all people) has no problem calling it what it is: Treason.
And so I write this diary asking for two words to enter the Democratic Party’s advocates on television. Just two. And they do not include “collusion” (a 50 cent word that doesn’t work in a slogan).
They are:
Scandal
Coverup
As in:
“The Trump-Russia scandal is outrageous and the entire Republican Party is now participating in an active coverup.”
Speak. Like. This.
There is a crime. It is a scandal. There is a coverup. It is clear. You do not need to wait for more “facts.” There are enough facts right now.
Treason happened.
It is no longer in doubt.
It is a FUCKING SCANDAL. A MAJOR ONE. WATERGATE LEVEL.
You can sit around and wait for Devin Nunes and the other Russian-bought treason scumbags in the Republican Party to spin their fiction on Fox News, or you can speak real truth to power.
Stop dicking around and call this out. Be a Patriot. This is worse than Watergate. And it is real.
