This little diary was inspired by Frank Rich's column today in the New York Times and it's an excellent piece as usual.
The only hope that the Republicans have; and it is almost a dead certainty as hopes go, is that we once again suffer from short term and long term memory loss, I call this:
American Amnesia.
To be charitable; we live in an information driven age, in fact many of us suffer from information fatigue, hence we allow others to do the remembering for us. By this I mean we accept that what we are told:
a] Has a grain of truth
b] Is the reality on the ground today.
This is what the Republican Party is banking on, and it usually gives a good rate of return.
The ancient meme:
Fama, malum qua non aliud velocius alium
[Rumour, than whom no other evil thing is faster.]
~Virgil in the Aeneid
The more modern equivalent being:
A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.
1859 C. H. Spurgeon
Followed by the ultimate
A lie, repeated often enough, will end up as truth.
~Dr Paul Joseph Goebbels [sometimes attributed to Vladimir Lenin who was more the exponent of the 'big lie' theory; this can also be applied]
.
Political Parties in general hope:
a] When in power that the people remember the last time the opposition was in power and just how bad they were at governing.
b] If in opposition the hope that the voters forget just how bad they were last time around the block, and hope to blame the current government for the present situation. This helps if the government in power rolls over and plays dead, at this point you should have read Frank Rich's column.
Americans in general regard themselves as go getters, think of the future and go for it, it has served us well in overcoming many obstacles but strangely enough has mired us in the past. We forget the lessons learned, and hence are doomed to repeat them. We will gladly vote for a disastrous Party whose policies have continuously been proved to be a total failures, all because in the present the other party hasn't waved the magic wand. So we are trapped within a cycle of sterility; and not change.
There is nothing easier to sell in US politics than let us forget the past and move on as a nation. This has been amply shown by our forgetfulness with respect to torture and war crimes. This refusal to look at the past also condemns us to repeat the very things we abhor.
It has been shown time and time again that Republican policies have increased the debt exponentially, each time they control the purse strings we lose control of the debt. Its solid historical fact, yet:
They come across as the party of fiscal responsibility.
Wow!
We didn't go far enough with the injection of money into the system, therefore the recovery has been stunted and we risk a double dip recession or even a depression if deflation takes hold. We have now been sold the ogre in the room 'austerity'. So we didn't stimulate the economy enough yet we are going to throttle it to make things better? Wow.
So here we have the Republican Party, you remember, the ones that created this mess in the first place, and the ones continuing to put roadblocks up to recovery at every turn now defining the reality. It looks very much as if they are going to be able to sell this toxic kool-aid to the voters in November. The Democratic Party refuses to get in the trenches and fight, and to fight effectively the past needs to play a defining role, we cannot just look forward because if we forget the past; it will bite us in the ass.
I call this
American Amnesia.
Have a great Sunday
Alessandra.