As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: You liberate a city by destroying it. Words are used to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
- Gore Vidal
ATTENTION, SHOPPERS!! TODAY’S SPECIAL SUPER-SAVER OF THE DAY IS CANNED UNICORN MEAT!!
HEY, I DON’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP! IT’S ON THE INTERNET!!
PRESIDENT OBAMA IS SNEAKING SMALL QUANTITIES OF MUSLIMS INTO THE COUNTRY!!
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S TRIP TO INDIA IS COSTING TAXPAYERS $200 MILLION PER DAY…AND HE’S BRINGING 34 WARSHIPS WITH HIM!!
WHY ARE MUSLIMS EXEMPT FROM OBAMACARE??
These days, it hardly seems to matter what the truth ACTUALLY is. What seems to matter is what you can convince the easily suggestible and unquestioning American Sheeple to believe. If you live in the hermetically-sealed Right-wing echo chamber, truth and reality really and truly are eminently fungible commodities. Real empirical truth is beside the point, an inconvenience to be ignored as if it doesn’t exist…because for these folks it doesn’t. “Truth”, for the Rabid Right, is useful only insofar as it can be massaged and manipulated in pursuit of their lust for power and control.
It’s difficult to have a coherent discussion about real issues when the narrative coming from the Right is based on lies, half-truths, propaganda, and talking points. I frequently bemoan the transformation of American democracy into something resembling the set from Idiocracy, but the sad reality isn’t far from this. Propaganda and fear-mongering reigns because Americans collectively are an exceedingly stupid and intellectually malleable lot. Americans believe what Fox Noise Channel tells them to believe…facts, truth, and reality be damned. Truth is for losers and Liberals.
Tuesday’s election results hardly represented a mandate for Republicans- and Republicans know this. If it was a mandate for anything, it was for the politics of the Big Lie, the idea that if you repeat something often enough and with enough conviction, it eventually becomes the Truth.
And you wonder why I fear for the future of this country? It’s because when Fascism comes, it will be carrying a Bible, spouting Right-wing talking points…and we’ll be too brain-dead and self-involved to notice or care.
Ah, well…does anyone know where I can find some canned unicorn meat?
