For decades Republicans have depended on hoaxes to power their political campaigns. Their legislative performance reflects it. They have declined into sabotage and criminal threatening. Their Libertarian and Randian fantasies and Right Wing Nut Job delusions are in play, in Washington, damaging our representative democracy.
Here is a baker's dozen of the GOP's antisocial hoaxes. Taken together these claims form a make-believe world. The GOP Dystopia:
-- Economic problems are rooted in a Lower Class of 47%er welfare state layabouts
-- Unions are criminal enterprises
-- Government operations are intrinsically incompetent (lacking profit motive which is the only honest way to do things)
-- Politicians are all crooks (especially Libruls, so voting doesn't matter)
-- Guns in homes are a sensible protection against home invasion (reflecting societal breakdown, alleged to occur 1,000,000+ times a year)
-- Government is the problem (referring to what we call Madisonian constitutional democracy; denying international competition, the 1%er redistribution, and increasing automation)
-- Global warming is an economy-killing leftist conspiracy
-- Guns in homes are our ultimate protection from tyranny
-- American Christians suffer rough and hurtful persecution
-- Science cannot be trusted (typically in argument, because scientific results can change over time. The Bible is absolute.)
-- The less government, the better; a.k.a., government-vs.-private-sector is a fixed sum game; a.k.a., taxes are theft
-- Supporters of legal abortion are "Baby Killers"
-- Media outlets are biased to Left/Liberal positions
Do a couple minutes work to research any GOP hoax. The profession versions consist of three sets of elements:
-- A psychological viewpoint, usually laid out as an advertising campaign. It trashes either a segment of society or a democratically established social process;
-- Related slogans; and
-- Dozens upon dozens of interconnected lies and ad hominem slanders
A viewpoint of a hoax succeeds where it is unopposed and its slogans can be sold to a target population. Where these viewpoints succeed, people can lose their sense of community. Personalities are altered by irrational fears.
Structured political hoaxes reach into the lives of tens of millions of Americans. These high-impact hoaxes are not to be confused with "myths" or "tales"; they are designed artifacts. The hoaxes also draw millions of Believers to the polls.
Never Underestimate Non-Rational Argument.
Exposing Americans to the GOP hoaxes looks to us like doing a group Total Immersion Baptism in a pig sty. Self-identified conservatives are cast into a Dark Side fantasia.
Tactical responses are sketched out below. Sketched, not developed in detail. This brief essay is not a Counterinsurgency Field Manual.
Take doing counterattacks one step at a time.
The narrative continues building up our inventory of GOP hoaxes. Risk patterns become apparent. For example opposition research on high-impact hoaxes let to this: "(____) Would Ban All Abortions."
This formula was applied in North Dakota and Montana in 2012. It is being applied in 2013 for Democratic Party campaigns all over the country. Where a GOP hoax veers over into authoritarianism, this form of counterattack strategy is recommended. Critical success factor: attack the hoax.
Progressives can apply these concepts to poach "Base" GOP voters in 2014 and build on that to generate a landslide result in 2016. Republicans who adhere publicly to the high-impact hoaxes can be called out and then driven from office.
We'll dig deeper going south from the orange muffin.....
Keep in mind what is happening here. These hoaxes damage people at the same time they are damaging our democracy.
People are being slimed with the GOP hoaxes. Hate-radio combines any number of xenophobic hatreds with artificial paranoid delusions. (Heaven help individuals suffering mental disorders, exposed to this brain-trash.) Republican politicians go out of their way to validate acceptance of the same hoaxes.
Here is a first-rate piece at DKOS:
The Brainwashing Of My Dad By Limbaugh, Fox & GOP Media
Opposition research shows that self-identified "Base" GOP voters report that they believe in twenty or more of the top three-dozen artificial hoaxes. Lord knows, "The Base" are into brand loyalty.
Tea Party, on the other hand, remains at its core a rebranded John Birch Society. Those were the guys who took money from the Koch brothers' father, Fred Koch, back in the 1950s. JBS started with published claims that President Eisenhower was a Soviet agent. Today they claim that President Obama is "not normal" and that he is plotting to change the country over to "European Socialism."
Tea Party office holders say they support pretty much all of the main hoaxes. This is not the conservatism of Barry Goldwater, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan.
Attacking democracy has moved to open war.
Republicans are committed to change America's form of government. They do not like representative government. Their anti-government zealots threaten to burn the place down.
News Corporation and the Koch brothers' loons and Powell Memo propaganda mills support more or less the same hoaxes. And it's not just them, not just Big Money. Spend an hour at any megachurch. Have a look at the "Receive, Remember, Apply" authoritarianism propounded by the Salt Lake City LDS. Same for hate-radio and rightie web sites.
GOP hoaxers have no problem selling hokum 24/7. They assume correctly that the proportion of voters who combine critical thinking with baseline research is close to zero. It takes a big effort. Same time, the DNC and think tank Democrats have not done the job for Americans closing this gap. Democrats talk their own stuff instead of running counterattacks.
Republican politicians insist they are pragmatic. No one in the GOP calls halt to short-term pay-off dishonesty.
= = = = = = = = = =
Of course our side can respond. Progressives have an open field to attack the hoaxes and their proponents. We can focus our efforts.
Continuing the narrative, we need to put handles on their structured hoaxes. Add these to the list:
-- Obama's election victories in 2008 and 2012 were illegitimate
-- Wealth redistribution to the top is what drives job creation
-- Ronald Reagan maximized American influence world wide
-- Democratic politicians are members of an out-of-touch elite; Democrats do not understand ordinary Americans
-- The 2003-2009 mortgage debacle was caused by lying poor people (which ties in with the broader hoax that the Welfare State has produced a 47%er class of dependent losers)
-- Corporations are people (which sounds funny until you consider "Undercover Boss" and the like)
-- Everyone in the world should love America
-- We're # 1
-- Vietnam and Iraq were examples of defending freedom and liberty and the American battlefield losses are all Americans care about
-- America's health care system is the best in the world
-- American football is a great sport and uniquely important as a character builder
-- Student debt is a normal part of education -- nothing happening, move on
-- Student debt and trashing support for Social Security -- nothing there, move on
-- Department of Defense is an essential and underfunded investment
-- Patriot Act cancellation of Madison's Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is what keeps Al Qaeda from killing your family
-- National Security Agency storage of "metadata" is not part of a vast invasion of private lives
-- Financing for politics in America is wide open and we are the Gold Standard for free elections
-- The War on Drugs goes back and forth with more victories than losses
-- Prisons lower the rate of violent crime by incarcerating "superpredators"
Mediamatters.org and the dailykos.com front page are waiting to see a single day off. No one expects a pause in the flow of anti-Middle-Class and anti-democracy propaganda.
You can do a game where you connect daily lies to the main hoaxes. Try this list from Red State:
-- Default: Going Over The Cliff, Or A Small Hill?
-- Illinois High School Students Given Death Panel Assignment
-- Obama DOT Plans use of National Guard to close I-495 Capital Beltway tomorrow?
-- The “One Issue” Harry Reid Shutdown: Saving the Obamacare
-- Exemption for D.C. Ruling Class
-- We need the true conservatives in Congress to re-take the narrative
-- Thanks for nothing Paul Ryan (complaining Ryan's not a dictator)
-- Obama’s Government Shutdown Freezes Death Benefits for Families of Fallen Soldiers
-- ‘Grats to Dem Rep John Lewis on His 45th Arrest. 7 other Lawmakers also Arrested at Illegal Immigration Rally.
-- Why the shutdown scares the petty vindictive little man Barack Obama
-- “Chicken Little” Obama: Default is Scare Tactic
-- Evolution Gives Us The Answer To Obamacare
-- DOJ Violates It’s OWN Shutdown Contingency Plan by Shutting
-- 2 Million Bikers to DC: On The Road with Veterans in DC during Shutdown
-- Lets look down the road, and see just how creepy the IRS involvement can become.
-- Obamacare is broken and so is our way of fighting it too!
-- The Liberal Media Shutdown
-- Why Central-Planning Won’t Work
-- Democrats’s Shutdown Is Refusal To Face The American People
-- Conservatives Are Fighting To Preserve The God-Given Right to Healthcare
-- As Usual The Public, and The Media, and Democrats Blame The Parent AKA Republicans
-- The Neighborhood Precinct Committeeman Strategy — It’s Up To Each Redstater, No?
-- Felony Arrest Haunts GOP Candidate Peter Vivaldi
-- Democrats’ New Outrageous Property Rights Power Grab
-- Sign the pledge: Tell Senate Democrats: Dismantle ObamaCare now and Don’t Shut Down The Government!
-- Neville Chamberlain In Our Time
-- The Time is Now! A Call to Duty: Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee (to burn down the house)
The piece about telling Democrats to dump ObamaCare and not shut down the government is from Reince Priebus, head of Republican National Committee. He thinks he's a rightie Albus Dumbledore? Here's the first paragraph:
"This weekend, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives listened to the American people and passed a continuing resolution that keeps the government running, delays ObamaCare for a year, and repeals the medical device tax."
Uh, sure thing. The Republicans' existential fear that ObamaCare and insurance reform will attract tens of millions of voters to the Democratic Party is transformed by incantation to "listened to the American people."
Priebus also connects to long standing hoaxes where government is intrinsically bad and hopelessly inefficient. National polls show 72% of the country opposed to shutting down the government. So Priebus creates a fantasy where Republicans are not shutting down the government.
It's an amazing performance. Priebus believes in the act of lying.
Liar's Poker
That term was used as a 1989 non-fiction book title by Michael Lewis. Cute game, too, a betting game played with the serial numbers on money. Popular with Wall Street traders. You have to read the book to see how perfectly this fits the mind set of professional GOP politicians.
There are two differences. One is that the Wall Street guys can choose not to play, where a bet gets out of hand. The other is that a trader wins at Liar's Poker when he calls out a lie from his opponent.
In Rience Priebus's world, nobody ever gets called out. There are no lies in the universe of Republican primary voters and Republican donors.
During the 2012 cycle this "truthiness" dysfunction was challenged by InTrade and by Fivethirtyeight/Nate Silver at the New York Times. As you may have noticed, they're both gone. Out of the game.
Donors were defrauded out of $250-million in the last weeks of the campaign with bogus projections of a Romney victory. InTrade and FiveThirtyEight called the facts. They are both damn well gone.
(John Delaney of InTrade, it should be noted, sits there 50 meters from the summit of Mount Everest. John left the building more than a year before the 2012 elections, but you get the idea. Delaney's the perfect symbol for what the GOP would do when truth interferes with extracting donations.)
Don't forget this is the liar's poker section.
Collections and Community
Collection (n): a defined group of things or people.
Taking on a hoax requires that you frame your arguments. Best, you get the collection that you are defending exactly right. The hoax attacks a group; you defend that whole group. The hoax attacks a communal process; you defend the process at the level of the whole community.
This is a different approach from what you do countering item-level lies. For folks raised on one-at-a-time who-what-when-where-how details, this broadening approach goes against the grain. This work requires commitment of numerous hours for research. Identifying an appropriate collection is at least as much art as opinion-polling science.
We need to be careful. We need to apply what is learned with multiple sources for opposition research. We need to apply what is learned with one problem to our other problems. Planning and testing matter.
Football
Obviously, you do not gain votes attacking football. Republicans like football. They use football as a proxy for masculinity. They like doing that.
The issue where Democrats can make a point is the National Football League, which is looking like out-of-control capitalism at its worst. This is a medical issue: football related head impacts cause a disease called CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) that results in premature dementia. NFL is starting to look like Big Tobacco plus shoulder pads.
The NFL refuses to support protections for children. Neurologists report that tackle football is not safe for children younger than the middle teens. The younger brain has not grown to fill the cranial cavity. Head-to-head impacts have more severe effects.
NFL paid out $765,000,000 in 2013 to former players suffering CTE dementia. That after decades of denying all connections between CTE and football. NFL continues to encourage organized football leagues at all age groups.
We have not figured out how to work this one. The NFL-CTE problem is documented on a Frontline piece at PBS. Thing is, there's not much limit to how large a gender gap we can generate. The Republican dystopia is broadly repulsive to American women. Football and war and money are just about it for GOP enthusiasms.
I am reminded of Philip Morris handing out cartons of cigarettes in 1998, long after they were shown to be carcinogenic. NFL franchises continue to push football at all age levels. There has to be a way to display responsibility with respect to football and the needs of Soccer Moms.
Abortion
This is also a tough one. If they did not have overwhelming support from anti-abortion voters, there would be no effective Republican Party. Out there in the Red States these single-issue Pro-Life voters provide 20% and 40% of Republican votes. The figures tend to bounce around.
A few of the Libertarians say they are strong Pro-Lifers -- fewer than 5% of that population -- and also say that making abortion illegal is a step too far.
We got into this and found a dead end trying to address theological issues. Judaism and Christianity count the arrival of the soul at the First Breath. Prior to that first natural breath the unborn child is alive, of course. But there is no soul present.
This is why miscarriages are not followed by funerals. The lost unborn child is not interred to Holy Ground. The Christian sacraments are granted to souls, not to every recently living body. You might think that logic would apply to the politics of abortion.
Unfortunately efforts to apply this argument are a cold losers for politics. Good logic, bad for getting votes.
Even the few Pro-Lifers who accept the First Breath concept at first hearing are seen to return to the "Baby Killer" slogan later on. First Breath arguments wear off.
What does work acceptably is a counterattack strategy. This has been tested.
First off, when you talk about abortion use the word "abortion." Avoiding the word carries a message that abortion is shameful.
There is one slogan that virtually all the anti-abortion voters support:
-- A Child Is Not A Choice
The reason this works so well politically is that is attacks the word "choice" and all it represents. Children are not to be murdered, so they are not to be equated with neutral valueless choices. You choose what you wear in the morning. You do not choose what they see as the miracle of life.
Every time a Democrat uses the term "Pro-Choice" as part of a positive argument, it sets these voters' teeth on edge.
Effective counterattack gets away from framing and diction play into "a child is not a choice" behavioral triggers. Play to win instead of keeping on doing what we've been doing. Turns out that playing to win is relatively easy.
Opposition research shows that anti-abortion voters see Pro-Life versus Pro-Choice decisions differently from Legal Abortion versus Make Abortion Illegal decisions. Again, this is all about framing and diction. We are in territory that favors Non-Rational Argument -- the stuff of advertising campaigns.
Choose words carefully. At the same time your top pay-off comes where you tag the authoritarian hubris of the Make Abortion Illegal position.
Research works. Where mention of "Pro-Choice" is avoided in opposition research polling documents, you get between 10% and 30% check-off for Legal Abortion among "Pro-Life" voters. Critically, sticking with "Legal Abortion," the Pro-Lifers are not asked to change their beliefs.
The campaign changes relate to diction, not substance. A hypothetical candidate who supports Legal Abortion can be competitive in very Red states.
"(____) Would Ban All Abortions" meets all requirements. The word "abortion" appears. The statement is a counterattack. Use it to replicate that 10% to 30% check-off from Pro-Life voters, get them to vote for the Democrat, and you can win anywhere.
One real test came with Heidi Heidtkamp who won with this campaign asset in 2012 in North Dakota. She puts notice that she is "Pro-Choice" in messages that go to Democrats. It was on her web site if you look for it. But her stump speech and her ads were careful to delineate legal abortion as her preference.
Any Red State Democrat who replaces "I am Pro-Choice" with "I support Legal Abortion" and the "Would Ban All Abortions" counterattack is going to do surprisingly well on election day.
Heidi had started out down by 30% as a generic Democrat and she won. She had to have gotten two-thirds of her vote increase from Republicans -- we know that her tactics worked.
Once that "Baby Killer" tag went under the bus, she was able to present her natural personality and lay it on her opponent, Rick Berg, that he had personal ethical issues and had introduced legislation that enabled flying 30,000 drones in the U.S.
Of course early on in that Senate race you could get 8:1 betting odds on the board against Heidi. Gotta love this game!
= = = = = = = = = = = =
The opposite pole to this GOP dreck sits at the start of the Constitution:
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
-- contributed by Gouverneur Morris of New Jersey
The year was 1787. This Preamble also did the job naming the country, which had wandered through versions with the earlier organizing documents.
Republican hoaxes did not exist. Actually, Republicans did not exist yet.
At the time there was also no legal definition for citizenship. If you registered as a property owner or a freeman, then you voted. You were counted by the 1790 census. America was a community. (Please make temporal allowances for women, the 3/5ths-of-a-person slaves, and "Indians" who had their own nations.)
RWNJ hoaxes present nasty, destructive attacks on the Preamble, on that world view of Madison, Morris, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Franklin. The hoaxes deny "E Pluribus Unum." The hoaxes go far beyond anything that the Anti-Federalists supported.
We can do better. Breaking hoaxes is one way to win a landslide election in 2016. Take the White House, the Senate with a total in the mid 60s, and the House.
My dream legislation at that point is to outlaw gerrymandering for the Districts for House elections. America could also get Single Payer, cut the military to 2% of GDP, stop the Big Brother madness rampant at NSA and CIA, and generally make America a good neighbor on this planet.
Busting hoaxes will require taking on their Non-Rational Arguments with solid opposition research, investigative journalism, and fact-based presentations worthy of Consumer Reports.
Make it happen. Think progress !!