No, it's not always this linear. Often it's recursive. But I wanted to make it so simple that a child could understand it.
For example, early on, Trump won over the mob by speaking to them in their political mother tongue -- the language and lies of Hate Radio and Fox News.
Later, Trump's lies and slanders got message-tested on MAGA bigots and imbeciles at his rallies. When they cheered, that line went into the playbook; when they didn't, that line got dropped or sent back to the workshop.
And since America's bigots and imbeciles -- that ignorant army that clashes by night -- saw fit to put him back in office, more and more frequently Trump just commandeers the entire propaganda delivery system. He demands that everyone downstream of him repeat and amplify his gibbering idiocy, and rise to defend his indefensible behavior.
So while Trump has risen over the past decade from the Accelerator of Lies to the Father of Lies, the purpose of the system has changed not at all. It's still doing what it was designed to do forty years ago: vacuum up the most incendiary swill it can find -- or, more often, just make shit up -- and fill the air with it.
And if Democrats are serious about not just eking out narrow victories over fascism from time to time but crushing it root and branch, then smashing the Conservatives' Pretty Hate Machine is imperative.
From me, 20 years ago (and from which I assume Rick Wilson has pilfered the title of his upcoming book, because aren't all Never Trump critiques pilfered from the archives of the Liberal blogosphere?)
Sadly, the Democrats' current strategy of pouring crazy amounts of money into campaign ads every two years and nothing into building a genuine, for-real Liberal media is exactly the wrong way to go about it.
1 comment:
the third way's tactic is to punt on the first down. they consider it too progressive to run a second down play.... they just mournfully cry 'NUH_UHHH' and punt.
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